“A graduate of New College, Oxford, Ash Wheatcroft practised as a solicitor from 1930 until 1951, with a break for a distinguished military career in the Second World War which he finished as a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Service Corps. He was a Chancery Master from 1951 to 1959 and wrote many of the sections on Court procedure for the 3rd edition of Halsbury’s laws of England. He was a Professor of Law at the School from 1959-1968 and from 1971 to 1972 was the official advisor to the Customs and Excise on the introduction of VAT. Ash Wheatcroft was an expert chess player (representing England before the War) and likened taxation to a game of chess between the practitioner and the Inland Revenue, played according to tightly drawn rules: he abhorred any suggestion that the Revenue might be given arbitrary powers to change the rules of the game once it had started”: Sir Mark Weinberg, The LSE Magazine, June 1988, No75, p. 22.