Education
Born in 1886 to Walter Christopher Cheshire, a solicitor in Northwich, Cheshire, and Clara (née Cook), he was educated at Denstone College and Merton College, Oxford, obtaining a first class honours degree in Jurisprudence in 1908.
Born in 1886 to Walter Christopher Cheshire, a solicitor in Northwich, Cheshire, and Clara (née Cook), 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, 1914-1919, with 2/6 Battalion Cheshire Regiment 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 1944-1949.
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 Merton College, Oxford (1945).
Honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Honorary Doctor of Laws London and Manchester.
And Fellow of the British Academy.
They had two children: (Geoffrey) Leonard Cheshire, Venture capital, Member of the Order of Merit, Defence Science Organisation, Distinguished Flying Cross, and Christopher Cheshire, who was also a wartime pilot. Geoffrey 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, published initially in 1925, became the standard text on the subject. This work has remained in print ever since and, updated by Burn and Cartwright, is now in its 17th edition
(Modern Law of Real Property, EH Burn & JHCartwright, O,Uttar Pradesh 17th Editor 2006).
Generations of students have also studied "The Law of Contract", first written in conjunction with the legal historian C.H.S.Fifoot in 1945, and in its 15th Edition (Law of Contract, Cheshire, Fifoot and Furmston, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 15th Editor 2007).