The next Master (subject to election) - Donald Valentine

Donald was born some moons ago in Saltwood in Kent. He grew up during the War in a small village in Sussex where his father was the vicar. D on ald went to the Grammar School in East Grinstead: was moved up two classes and entered the Sixth Form at the age of fourteen.

Donald being installed as Senior Warden by the Master at the installation ceremony

At 17 he won a County Major Scholarship to Cambridge but was then forced at tax-payer's expense, to take a gap year serving his King and Country - largely on a troopship sailing to Singapore and back. He rose to the dizzy height of Sergeant in the Education Corp – which, when necessary, pretended to be part of the British Army.

At Trinity, Donald read Law: spoke in the Union and became President of the C.U. Liberal Club. In 1952 he obtained a First Class degree. He was then made an Exhibitioner of Trinity College and a State Scholar and was awarded the Whitaker Scholarship to Lincoln's Inn .

After a fourth year in Cambridge , Donald won a Fellowship to the Netherlands . There, under the tutorship of Prof. Verziel of Utrecht University, he wrote the first book in English on what is now the European Court of Justice – then the Court of the European Coal and Steel Community – which this country had refused to join.

This book was published in the Netherlands and reviewed in law journals in Europe, Asia and America. The book won Donald a doctorate from Utrecht University.

In 1954 Donald was appointed as Assistant Lecturer at The London School of Economics; was called to the Bar in 1956 and joined his present Chambers in 1958. He then stood in Wembley North as a Liberal Candidate in the 1959 General Election. This constituency was known as a safe seat – because there was no fear of being elected. He wasn't.

For the next seven years, when not teaching or in court, Donald was engaged in writing his second book on the European Court. Because the UK was still not a member of the Community, the Court's judgments were not issued in English. Donald, therefore, had to translate from French the first 10 years of the Court 's judgments.

In 1965 an early draft of this second book was bought from Donald by the British Government for £700. This draft was then typed by the civil service and circulated to the legal teams who were about to undertake abortive negotiations to join the Community.

In 1965 the two volumes of Donald's book were published jointly in England and America . His translation of the first 63 judgments was subsequently accepted as constituting the Court's authentic text.

In 1966 Donald, with his wife and two young daughters, went as Professor and Dean of the Law Faculty to the University of Nigeria. Because of tribal conflicts, Ibo graduates were refusing to go to the Professional Law School in Lagos . Donald was therefore asked to set up a Biafran Professional Law School for them. The Government provided him with an ex-minister's empty house and £2,000. The first lecture and tutorials were given 6 weeks later.

When the Biafran war finally broke out in 1967, Donald's family were evacuated by air. Donald stayed on until the Biafran Bar Finals had been marked. He then fled the country. It cost all of 6d to cross the Niger .

Back in London , Donald combined being a Reader at LSE with practice at the Bar. By 1982, however, this double life had become too much. It was then to be the Bar only.

But not for long. Donald was soon called upon to run 2 and 3 day seminars on the multivarious building, civil and mechanical engineering contracts. These seminars were not only for contractors (Costain, Mowlems, Balfour Beatty etc) but for British Rail, at their headquarters in York , Scottish Hydro-Electrics, Water Boards and Local Authorities.

In 1990 Donald was elected as the First Chairman of the newly formed London Branch of the CIArb. Subsequently, for seven years, he was their representative on the Council of the Chartered Institute. He is now one of the Institute's Chief Examiners. This task he fits in between periods of acting as arbitrator and as tutor in arbitrations. Somehow, he says, there will still be time to be a Master.