David Hirst

Sir David Cozens-Hardy Hirst (31 July 1925 – 31 December 2011) was an English barrister and judge who served as a Lord Justice of Appeal from 1992 to 1999. The Times described him as "one of the leading advocates of his generation". Early life Hirst was born in Meltham, the son of Thomas William Hirst and Margaret Joy ( Cozens-Hardy). His father was a cotton mill owner. His mother was a member of the Cozens-Hardy family of Norfolk; his maternal grandfather founded a firm of solicitors in Norwich, while his great-uncle was the politician and judge Herbert Cozens-Hardy, 1st Baron Cozens-Hardy, who served as Master of the Rolls from 1907 to 1918. He was educated at Packwood Haugh School and Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar. He was called up for war service in 1943 and joined the Royal Artillery, but because of training accident he never saw action. He was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps in 1945, and was posted to Singapore and then Burma before being demobilised in 1947 with the rank of captain. He then read history and law at Trinity College, Cambridge, before being called to the bar by Inner Temple in 1951. Career at the bar Hirst did his pupillage in the chambers of Eric Sachs QC at 4 Paper Building, before beginning a general common law practice on the South-Eastern circuit. In 1953, he was second junior to Neville Faulks QC, who was prosecuting the "pottery conspiracy" case at the Old Bailey, the longest trial in the court's history until then. Faulks was impressed by his performance, and invited him to join his chambers at 1 Brick Court, a fashionable set specialising in defamation; Hirst became head of chambers in 1965. Other tenants of his chambers included Colin Duncan, Brian Neill, and Leon Brittan, his only pupil.