Geoffrey Cheshire

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Professor Geoffrey Chevalier Cheshire, DCL, LLD, FBA (27 June 1886–27 October 1978) was an English barrister, scholar and influential writer on law. He is also known as the father of Leonard Cheshire, VC, the English war hero and founder of the Cheshire Homes charity.

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[edit] Biography

He was the son of Walter Christopher Cheshire, a solicitor in Northwich, Cheshire, and Clara (née Cook), his wife. He was educated at Denstone College and Merton College, Oxford, obtaining a first class honours degree in Jurisprudence in 1908. He received a Lectureship in Law at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, working for Professor T.A. Levi, but returned to Oxford in 1911, where he was elected to a fellowship in law at Exeter College in 1912.

He served in World War I, 1914-19, with 2/6 Battalion Cheshire Regt. and the Royal Flying Corps: he retired with the rank of captain.

He became a barrister (Lincoln's Inn) in 1922 and, in the same year took on the additional office of All Souls' Lecturer in Private International Law. He was All Souls reader in English Law, from 1933, and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, from 1944-49. In 1944 he was elected Vinerian Professor of English Law and there followed a succession of other honours: honorary bencher of Lincoln's Inn (1944); honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford; honorary LLD London and Manchester; and Fellow of the British Academy.

He married (Burella) Primrose Eleanor Barstow, daughter of Lt. Col. Thomas Anderson Adam Barstow, on 6 February 1915. They had two children: (Geoffrey) Leonard Cheshire, VC, OM, DSO, DFC, and Christopher Cheshire, who was also a wartime pilot.

Primrose Cheshire died in 1962 and, in the following year, Geoffrey Chevalier Cheshire married Mary Kathleen Lloyd, DBE, daughter of A J Lloyd. She died on 3 April 1972.

[edit] Contribution to Law

Cheshire's obituary in The Times described him as "the first academic lawyer to tackle the great reforms in the law of property associated with the name of Lord Birkenhead", and his first book Modern Law of Real Property, first published in 1925, became the standard text on the subject. This work has remained in print ever since and, updated by E.H. Burn, is now in its 16th edition.

[edit] Bibliography

  • G.C. Cheshire, Modern Law of Real Property, 1925
  • G.C. Cheshire, Private international law, 1935
  • G.C. Cheshire, & C.H.S Fifoot, The law of contract, 1945
  • G.C. Cheshire, The Private International Law of Husband and Wife, 1963

[edit] References

  • Cheshire : The biography of Leonard Cheshire, VC, OM (Richard Morris, 2000)
  • The Times, 28 October 1978, Obituary: Professor G.C. Cheshire—Influential writer on the law