THE PRESIDENT: The Rt Hon Sir Colin Rimer MA LLB (54-62)
delivered by Professor C.J. Hamson, who arranged for him to spend the following year in Paris as a research assistant at the Institut de Droit Comparé. It was 1967/68, the year of the May 1968 événements. Colin was called to the Bar by Lincoln’s Inn in 1968. Following a year’s pupillage, he became a tenant at a set of chancery chambers at 13 Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn, which after his time there merged with another set to form Maitland Chambers. He practised at the Chancery Bar for 25 years, dealing mainly with property, company, commercial and insolvency cases, and was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1988. In 1994, he was appointed a High Court Judge, assigned to the Chancery Division, when he also became a Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. In 2002, he was appointed a judge of the Employment Appeal Tribunal and, in 2007, he was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall in 2009. He retired from the Court of Appeal in 2014, although still sits there on an occasional basis when asked and available. In 2015, he was appointed a Justice of Appeal for Gibraltar, where he also sits on an occasional basis. Colin has been married to Penny for 47 years. They have three children and four grandchildren. His daughter, Catherine, a solicitor, went to JAGS. His younger son, Michael, a barrister, is an OA (82-92).
After four years at Shortlands House School, in Beckenham (now Bishop Challoner School), Colin Rimer came to Dulwich in September 1954 as a 10 year old. His arrival coincided with that of Ronald Groves as Master and of Terry Walsh, now the College’s Senior Fellow, who was Colin’s form master in his second year. In his first year, his form master was the former Olympic athlete, Ralph Starr, who in 1955 became Head of the Lower School. Colin was in Spenser. His sporting love was cricket, although the limit of his ability was such that the height of his achievement at school level was a place in the under-13 team: failing to make the Junior Colts the following year marked an unforgettably low
point for him. On the work side, he favoured arts subjects and in the Upper School was on the Modern Side, where he was memorably taught by R.P. Dray, Desmond Fitch, John Gwilliam, Ernest Heard, Eric Parsley and Philip Vellacott. After leaving the College in December 1962, Colin went up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he read law. His original intention was to become a solicitor, but in 1966 he became a member of Lincoln’s Inn with a view to practising as a barrister. He graduated in the same year but stayed on at Cambridge for a further year in order to read for the LLB degree. One subject he studied that year was English and French comparative law, with lectures
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