He also served as Britain's principal delegate to the United Nations immediately after the Second World War and as Attorney General for England.

[2] Shawcross attended Dulwich College, the London School of Economics and the University of Geneva and read for the Bar at Gray's Inn, where he won first-class honours.

In 1946, when debating the repeal of laws against trade unions in the House of Commons, Shawcross allegedly said "We are the masters now",[7] a phrase that came to haunt him.

Shawcross's opening speech, which lasted two days, 26 and 27 July 1946, sought to undermine any belief that the Nuremberg Trials were "victor's justice" in the sense of being revenge exacted against defeated foes.

In his closing speech, he ridiculed any notion that any of the defendants could have remained ignorant of Aktion T4, extermination of thousands of Germans because they were old or mentally ill.

He used the same argument in respect of millions of other people "annihilated in the gas chambers or by shooting" and maintained that each of the 22 defendants was a party to "common murder in its most ruthless forms".

[18] In October 1974, he poured scorn on a Labour Party pamphlet that recommended the application of "internal democracy" to editorial policy, saying "This means that... there would be some sort of committee consisting at the best of a mixture of van drivers, press operators, electricians and the rest, with no doubt a few journalists, but more probably composed of trade union officials, to deal with editorial policy.

[19] Shawcross held a number of company directorships including with EMI, Rank Hovis MacDougall, Caffyns Motors Ltd, Morgan et Cie SA, and Times Newspapers, and chairman of Upjohn & Co Ltd.

[11] In 1957, he was among a group of eminent British lawyers who founded JUSTICE, the human rights and law reform organisation and he became its first chairman, a position he held until 1972.

[20] From 1947 to 1960 he was the owner of Vanity V, a 12-metre class racing yacht designed by William Fife to the Third International Rule, built in 1936, which he kept at his home in Cornwall.

[25] A later skipper of the boat, John Crill, recalls being told that Lord Shawcross, "when the election was due in about 1951, had Vanity V repainted with a vast 'Vote Labour' banner all the way along her topsides".