Cross was educated at Westminster School, where he was a scholar, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took Firsts in both parts of the Classics tripos, as well as winning the Craven Scholarship in 1925.

[2] He retired from the House of Lords in 1975, upon reaching fifteen years of judicial service.

[1] After his retirement, Cross served as the Chairman of the Appeal Committee of the Panel on Takeovers and Mergers between 1976 and 1981.

Cross was elected a bencher of the Middle Temple in 1958 and an honorary fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1972.

[1] In 1952 Cross married Joan Davies, née Wilmot, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Eardley Wilmot, DSO, and widow of Thomas Walton Davies; they had one daughter.