A life of law, risk and rich experience

RALPH HAMILTON LOWNIE, one of Britain's longest-serving judges, was born in Edinburgh on September 27, 1924, into a family with strong literary associations.

His maternal grandfather, Edward Hamilton Aitken (who wrote under the pen-name Eha), was almost as well-known in his day as Rudyard Kipling, with books such as A Naturalist on the Prowl and The Tribes on my Frontier still in print.

Educated at George Watson's College, Lownie volunteered for the Royal Engineers in 1943. He saw fierce fighting in Belgium, Holland and Germany and was one of the first soldiers to cross the Rhine. On demobilisation, in 1947, he enrolled at Edinburgh University, where he was a member of the Student Representative Council and took both a general arts and then a law degree. He enrolled as a solicitor, became a member of the Scottish Bar and was set to follow a conventional and distinguished Scottish legal career.

However, a spirit of adventure took him to Kenya, where he held a succession of posts as deputy registrar in the Supreme Court, senior magistrate, deputy registrar-general and, in his own time, set up and lectured at the Kenya School of Law. The Mau Mau uprising – an insurgency by Kenyan rebels against the British colonial administration during the 1950s – was at its height and his work around the country was often dangerous.

In 1960, Ralph married Claudine Lecrocq and they had a son Andrew and daughter Solange.

Still too young to be appointed a colonial judge, in 1965 Ralph and his family moved to Bermuda where he became the senior magistrate. Here, a burgeoning independence movement with civil unrest and rioting again put his life at risk.

In the autumn of 1972, the chief of police and, shortly afterwards, the governor, Sir Richard Sharples, were assassinated by the Black Beret Cadre, but Ralph, another target, refused to bow to the threat. However, having reached as high career-wise as he could in Bermuda, he returned to Britain to become a metropolitan stipendiary magistrate.

Sitting in south London, he was involved from an early stage in the high-security court at Lambeth set up to deal, in particular, with IRA terrorism. In 1986, he became a circuit judge, sitting until his retirement in 1995 at Maidstone, Canterbury and Croydon, where he was known for his impartiality, judgment and lack of pomposity.

At the age of 80 he published Auld Reekie, a widely praised anthology on Edinburgh, with an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith, and at the time of his death he had just completed a book on the Scottish feudal baronies.

Ralph was a witty, charming and modest man with wide interests, including hill-walking and history, and he had a particular fondness for Scotland and France.

He is survived by Claudine and his son and daughter.