In his final summing up before sending the jury out to consider their verdict in the Peter Balcombe murder trial, Mr Justice Wynne-Williams told them that after strangling his wife the defendant did nothing to try and revive her.

"He did nothing, from his own account, to assist the deceased in any way," said the judge.

He had spent three hours summing up salient points from the evidence for the jury of eight men and four women to consider.

The judge reminded the jury of what Balcombe had said was going through his mind when he put his hands around his wife Eunice's throat: "I did not intend to kill her or cause her serious injury.

"I wanted to restrain her, I wanted her to wake up to reality."

Mrs Balcombe had been due to walk their three children to school but had a phone call from America form her sister, Murugi Mungai Kapu, so Balcombe took them.

When he returned home at about 9.30am he began questioning his wife about whether she had two SIM cards for her mobile phone.

Judge Wynne-Williams said it was clear that Balcombe had not accepted that her fling with 21-year-old Latvian Vladimir Platach was over.

The judge reminded the jury that only the previous evening Balcombe had allegedly told his daughter Christine, from the first of his three marriages, he intended to kill his wife by driving into a tree after undoing her seat belt.

"Did that conversation happen?" said the judge.

"If it happened was it significant? Or it is the reality that he did say it?"

On the morning of Mrs Balcombe's death, said the judge, Balcombe decided to talk to her about the future of their marriage but she "blanked him".

The defendant said he asked his wife if she wanted an amicable or a messy divorce. She replied if anyone was going to get a divorce it would be her, not him.

The case revolved on what Eunice Balcombe allegedly told her husband next, insulting his manhood, the judge said.

Balcombe told police that his wife said to him: "If I want an affair, I'll have an affair. If I want to talk to someone, I'll talk to someone.

"If I want a lover, I will have a lover. If you were not so inadequate I would not have to look elsewhere."

Balcombe claimed he had grabbed his wife by the neck "to wake her up to reality".

He held her for a few second and they both fell to the floor.

"That was his description of those fatal few last seconds," the judge said.