Robert Megarry

Sir Robert Edgar Megarry, PC, FBA (1 June 1910 – 11 October 2006) was an eminent British lawyer and judge.

Originally a solicitor, he requalified as a barrister and also pursued a parallel career as a legal academic. He later became a High Court judge and served as Vice-Chancellor of the Chancery Division from 1976 to 1981. Afterwards he served as Vice-Chancellor of the Supreme Court from 1982 to 1985. A prolific legal writer, he is known for such works as The Law of Real Property, Lectures on the Town and Country Act 1947, and A Manual of the Law of Real Property.

Megarry's father was a solicitor in Belfast; his mother's father was a Major General. Megarry was born in Croydon, Surrey and was educated at Lancing and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He did not concentrate on his academic studies at university, writing for student newspaper Varsity as its first music critic, played football and tennis for his college, and obtained a pilot's licence; he ended up with a third class degree. He married his wife, Iris, in 1936, and they had three daughters. His wife died in 2001, but he was survived by his daughters.

Having trained as a solicitor, he practised as one from 1935 to 1941. He also taught law students, and lectured at Cambridge from 1939 to 1940. He worked at the Ministry of Supply during the Second World War, rising to Assistant Secretary by 1946. With encouragement from Arthur Goodhart, Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University, he retrained as a barrister, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1944, and left the civil service to practise as a barrister in 1946, specialising in equity and land law. In parallel to his legal career, he also taught law at Cambridge University, becoming a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1945, and rising to become a university Reader by 1967. He was elected as a member of the Bar Council in 1948. He became a QC in 1956, was a bencher at Lincoln's Inn in 1962, and was Treasurer in 1981.

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