Sir David Hirst - Telegraph David was sent to prep school at Packwood Haugh, then based in Warwickshire, and on the outbreak of the Second World War went as a King's Scholar to Eton (others in the same election included Robert Armstrong, later Cabinet Secretary under Margaret Thatcher). He was an active member of the debating society and a keen cricketer, but lost out on the chance of getting into the XI after being called up for war service in 1943, thus missing his final year. Early on in his training with the Royal Artillery, however, he fell from a rope bridge and broke his wrist badly. By the time he was fully fit again, the war was over. Shortly after the Japanese surrender he went out as an intelligence officer to Singapore and then Burma, before eventually being demobbed in the rank of captain in 1947. He then read History at Trinity, Cambridge, where he again did a lot of debating, narrowly missing out on becoming President of the Union, and also met the girl he was to marry, Pamela Bevan, who lived just outside Cambridge at Longstowe Hall. After graduating he read for the Bar and was called by Inner Temple in 1951, joining the leading defamation set of chambers at 1 Brick Court (then headed by Neville Faulks QC, uncle of the author Sebastian Faulks). Other notable members of chambers included Colin Duncan, Brian Neill - a lifelong friend - and latterly Leon Brittan, Hirst's only pupil. During the 1960s he acted in a series of highly publicised libel cases. In 1961, on behalf of the Daily Mail, Hirst apologised to the suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams for a report that he had been identified as the poisoner of many of his patients. In 1966, a year after taking Silk, he won £5,000 damages for Lord Russell of Liverpool against Private Eye over an article that alleged that Russell had written his books on war crimes in order to stimulate an unhealthy interest in the subject. The next year he won an apology and "substantial damages" for RJ Minney, the author of Carve Her Name With Pride, from Professor MRD Foot over allegations that the account he had given of Violette Szabo's torture and suffering at the hands of the Gestapo was the product of a prurient imagination. By the turn of the decade Hirst's practice had shifted more towards commercial work, and in 1971 he acted for Paul McCartney in his action to dissolve the Beatles partnership, Apple Corps. He later acted for all the Beatles in their action against their controversial manager, Allen Klein. The case took Hirst across the Atlantic on Concorde, but never converted him to pop music, which he heartily disliked. After serving as chairman of the Bar in 1978-79, during which he staunchly defended the Bar's monopoly on rights of audience in the High Court, he was offered the High Court bench but turned it down. He later changed his mind, and after a slightly anxious wait, was appointed in 1982 to the Queen's Bench Division and then the Commercial Court, where he particularly enjoyed the challenging work and having all the great commercial barristers of that generation appear before him. He was a friendly but businesslike judge who liked counsel to get on with it, particularly on Fridays, when the case ideally needed to finish by 2.30pm at the latest so that he could be on the afternoon train to Dorchester in good time. He was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 1992, whereupon he was also sworn of the Privy Council, and stayed there until his retirement in 1999. He served as Treasurer of the Inner Temple in 1995. After retiring aged 74, Hirst served as chairman of the new Spoliation Panel, established by Tony Blair to rule on claims by descendants of victims of Nazi Germany whose pictures and other works of art had found their way after the war into British public collections. David Hirst had been elected by the Eton beaks as the Masters" Fellow in 1976, and he relished sitting on the Provost and Fellows, as the governing body is known, immersing himself again in the life of his old school. He was re-elected three times and retired - reluctantly - only in 1996. His other interests away from the law included theatre and opera, shooting and growing vegetables. He is survived by his wife, whom he married in 1951, and by their three sons and two daughters. Sir David Hirst, born July 31 1925, died December 31 2011