Gonne Pilcher (nicknamed "Toby" within his family) was the eldest son of Major-General
Thomas David Pilcher,
CB, and Kathleen Mary, younger daughter of Colonel Thomas Gonne, of the
17th Lancers. Gonne Pilcher's aunt was Irish radical
Maud Gonne, whose son,
Seán MacBride, was a
Clann na Poblachta politician and
Irish Republican Army Chief-of-Staff. Pilcher was educated at
Wellington College and
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took honours in the Mediaeval and Modern Languages
tripos in 1911. He was
called to the Bar by the
Inner Temple in 1915. During the
First World War, he served in France and Belgium, for which he was
mentioned in dispatches and was awarded the
Military Cross. After the war, he initially joined the chambers of
William Jowitt (later Earl Jowitt), before moving to Admiralty chambers. He was Junior Counsel to the
Admiralty in the Admiralty Court from 1935 to 1936, when he became a
King's Counsel. He was appointed Deputy Chairman of the
Somerset Quarter Sessions in 1938. During the
Second World War, he was officially described as an attached officer at the
War Office from September 1939 to October 1942; in reality, he was part of a group of lawyers recruited as officers by
MI5. In 1942, he was appointed a
Justice of the High Court pursuant to joint addresses from both Houses of Parliament in succession to Mr Justice Langton, who was found dead in unusual circumstances. He was assigned to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division and received the customary
knighthood. He was mainly concerned with the Admiralty side of the Division's work, though he dealt with probate and divorce cases as well. On 9 May 1951, he was transferred to the King's Bench Division, where he sat until his retirement in 1961. Pilcher was vice-president of the
Comité Maritime International from 1947 to 1962, president of the British Maritime Law Association from 1950 to 1962, and chairman of the committee appointed to enquire into the administration of justice under
Naval Discipline Act from 1950 to 1951. He headed the United Kingdom's delegation to the Brussels Diplomatic Conference on International Maritime Conventions in May 1952, September 1958, and May 1961. In 1918, Pilcher married Janet, elder daughter of Allan Hughes, of Lynch,
Allerford,
Somerset. They had a son, killed on active service in 1941, and a daughter, Judith, who married
Robin Dunn (later a
Lord Justice of Appeal) in 1941. == References ==