THE legal world was in mourning today for Gilbert Gray QC, the North Yorkshire magistrate’s son who rose to be a “towering figure” in the law.

The eminent barrister and head of York Chambers practised at the top of his profession for 40 years and continued to work right up to the short illness that led to his death on Thursday. He was 82, and married with two sons and two daughters.

“He was very proud of the fact he didn’t retire,” said John Elvidge QC, deputy head of the chambers. “He was a one-off. There are many very fine barristers, but he was in a special class. He was someone who was a towering figure.”

Respected nationally and internationally, Mr Gray appeared in many high-profile and complex criminal law cases, as well as in major public inquiries such as the Selby coalfield, the Leeds airport expansion and the Bridlington marina inquiry.

His court appearances included the Spycatcher case in Australia, when the British Government tried to block the autobiography of former MI5 assistant director Peter Wright, the Arms-to-Iraq trial involving senior executives of Churchill Matrix and the Brink’s-Mat bullion robbery trial.

Mr Gray defended the serial murderer Donald Nielsen at his trial in 1976.

He also appeared at the public inquiry into the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry in Zeebrugge in 1987.

Mr Gray was the son of Scarborough magistrate Robert Gray and Elizabeth Gray. Called to the Bar in 1953 after gaining a first-class honours degree at the University of Leeds, where he was president of the university's union, he became recorder and deputy High Court judge in 1972 and took silk in 1979. He was among the few judges allowed to sit at the Old Bailey, and was leader of the North Eastern Circuit Bar from 1984 to 1988. He was also Master of the Bench at Gray’s Inn.

Outside the courtroom, he stood for Parliament for the Liberal Party in 1955 and 1959. He was a keen farmer and had a long association with the RNLI, becoming life vice president and a member of its council as well as president of its Scarborough and Filey stations.

A popular after-dinner speaker, he gave all his speech fees to the lifeboatmen’s charity.