Terry de Valera, who has died aged 85, was appointed Taxing Master of the Supreme and High Courts in 1969, and later that year became Senior Master; he retired in 1992. He was also a painter and musician, and he had an interest in the occult.
His legal career began in 1941 when he was apprenticed to the solicitor Tommy Robinson; he qualified four years later. He then joined the practice of P.J. Ruttledge, who had served in government with his father. In 1952 he set up on his own and, while life was arduous and exacting, he built up a good practice that increased steadily as time progressed.
A traditionalist, he lamented what he saw as a fall in professional standards. Totally opposed to the televising of court proceedings, he described the coverage of the O.J. Simpson case in the US as "vulgar theatre". He held that dignity was essential in court. "I make no apologies for contending that a court ought to be held in some degree of awe, which in turn begets respect for the law itself and the enforcement of rights."
Born in June 1922 in Greystones, Co Wicklow, he was the youngest son of Eamon and Sinéad de Valera. He grew up in Dublin, first in Sandymount and later in Blackrock. The family retained its links with Wicklow through summer holidays spent in Delgany.
He attended Blackrock College, where the future Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Charles McQuaid, was president. He enjoyed playing the piano and took part in school productions of Gilbert and Sullivan. He later had the pleasure of hearing the Army Number One Band play one of his compositions. Later still he obtained first-class honours in Royal Irish Academy of Music examinations for the violin and piano.
He remembered the Emergency as a time when a "spirit of unity and patriotism" prevailed. A member of the Local Defence Force, he was attached to a unit in Dún Laoghaire. With his brothers, Ruairí and Vivion, he took part in the military parade in Dublin to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. His father watched with pride from the reviewing stand at the GPO.
His childhood enthusiasm for aviation never waned and he was thrilled to meet Charles Lindbergh in 1936. As a young man he took flying lessons at Weston Aero Club and showed above-average ability as a pilot. But a "most vivid premonition" that he would be killed or seriously injured caused him to abandon flying.
He turned his attention to the life and work of Chopin and in 1949 he compiled and presented an hour-long radio programme to mark the centenary of the composer's death. He also developed an interest in John Field, but found it extremely difficult to obtain biographical material from the Soviet Union, which did not then have diplomatic relations with Ireland.
He persisted, however, and obtained the information he sought through British channels. Due to pressure of work he was unable to proceed with a planned book and he passed on the material he had gathered to Patrick Piggott, who wrote the definitive biography of Field.
He later worked with his friend Charles Lynch, whose playing of Field he considered "exquisite", on a series on the composer for Raidió [ sic] Éireann. In 1982 he presented a further series to mark Field's bicentenary. He approached the then taoiseach, Charles Haughey, with a proposal for a lasting memorial to Field. As a result, a bust was commissioned and placed in a room named after the composer at the National Concert Hall.
He began to take a serious interest in art when in the early 1950s he became a student of Yann Renard Goulet. Having exhibited works of sculpture in Royal Hibernian Academy and Oireachtas exhibitions, he later turned his hand to painting and regularly exhibited at the Kennedy Gallery in Harcourt Street.
In the early 1980s he joined the Old Dublin Society, writing papers on John Field, Sarah Curran's musical interests and the Sheares brothers which were published in the Dublin Historical Record. In 1984 the Order of Merit was conferred on him by the Polish government in recognition of his work on Chopin and Field. A fellowship of the Royal Irish Academy of Music was conferred on him in 1998.
He never had any desire to become a politician. "Politics, I am convinced, is a special vocation. And with some almost like a disease [ sic], and often an incurable one." But he was by no means apolitical, campaigning for Fianna Fáil in many elections. And he was proud that his daughter Síle chose to follow in the footsteps of her grandfather. His A Memoir (2004) was largely a memoir of his parents, which led to an exchange between Senator Martin Mansergh (now a TD) and Tim Pat Coogan in The Irish Times.
Predeceased by his wife, Phyllis (née Blake), he is survived by his daughters Síle and Jane.
Terry de Valera: born June 4th, 1922; died June 27th, 2007