 Stevenson retired from the bench in 1979 aged 76, and died at St Leonards in East Sussex on 26 December 1987.Stevenson was born in Newquay, Cornwall, on 17 October 1902, the eldest child and only son of the Reverend John George Stevenson and his wife Olive, sister of Henry Wickham Steed, journalist and editor of "The Times" from 1919 until 1922.The Rev.