of Henry Wickham Steed, journalist and editor of The Times from 1919 until 1922. The Rev. J. G. Stevenson, a Congregational minister, died when his son was fourteen years old, plunging the family into relative poverty. An uncle who was a solicitor funded Stevenson's ongoing education at Dulwich College in London, intending that the young Stevenson would join the family firm once his schooling was complete. There was no money available to allow him to attend university, so Stevenson studied for an external London University LLB degree after becoming an articled clerk in his uncle's legal practice. Stevenson was determined to become a barrister, and joined the Inner Temple, of which he became the treasurer in 1972. Career at the bar Shortly after being called to the bar in 1925 he joined the chambers of Wintringham Stable at 2 Crown Office Row, now Fountain Court Chambers. He remained there for the rest of his legal career, save for the war years, eventually becoming head of chambers. Most of Stevenson's early legal work was in the field of insolvencies, "almost always with small fees", and he made steady progress until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. He did very little criminal work in this part of his career. In 1940 he joined the army and served until 1945 as a Deputy Judge Advocate with the rank of major; he was appointed a King's Counsel in 1943. In 1945 he served as Judge Advocate at the war crimes trial in Hamburg of former personnel of the German submarine U-852, the so-called Peleus affair. The U-boat captain, Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, was accused of ordering his crew to open fire on the survivors of a Greek ship, the SS Peleus, which they had just torpedoed and sunk. Eck and two of his junior officers were executed by firing squad; he was the only U-boat commander of the war to be convicted of war crimes committed at sea. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Stevenson started to build his chambers' high reputation for commercial litigation, together with Alan Orr and Leslie Scarman, supported by a notable barristers' clerk, Cyril Batchelor. He was elected a bencher of the Inner Temple in 1950, and appointed Recorder of Cambridge, a part-time judge, in 1952; he had previously served as Recorder for Rye from 1944 to 1951. In 1954 he represented the government of British Kenya