My father, Michael Dunlap, who has died aged 93, was solicitor general of Kenya and permanent secretary for justice and constitutional affairs in the years leading up to the country's independence in 1963. Afterwards, he stayed on as legal adviser to Jomo Kenyatta's government.
Michael's mother, Ida, an artist of great brilliance, had married an American mining engineer, Ernest Alexander Dunlap, who had made the arduous trek to the Klondike to search for gold. However, the harsh Montana winters proved too much for Ida's health, and she returned, pregnant with Michael, and with two tiny daughters, Fay and Lys, to her mother in London, where Michael was born. He grew up in an idyllic, artistic household, first in Battersea, then in Loose, Kent, influenced by uncles, mainly clergy and lawyers – archetypal Victorians of great character whom he described with affection and wit in his autobiography The Three Chances. After Ida's death when he was 12, he went to live with his maiden great-aunts in their large Kent house.
He became an articled clerk in Maidstone and had taken his first law exams when conscripted into the army in 1939. Later that year, he was taken prisoner and spent five years in camps in Poland. During his captivity he led a 12-piece dance band, the Blue Jays, with Michael on piano, arranging and composing much of their music. His sister, having asked the Law Society which books he would need to pass the second half of his exams, sent them out to him via the Red Cross. In January 1945, when the PoWs at Lamsdorf were rounded up to be evacuated, Michael and two fellow bandsmen slipped away and managed to avoid recapture until American troops came through and picked them up.
Michael joined the colonial legal service in 1950 and was sent to the Gold Coast, accompanied by his young wife, Jane, and baby son, Christopher, as Assistant Commissioner of Lands. After Ghana became independent in 1957, he was appointed crown counsel in Kenya, with his later work there involving the revision of the country's laws.
Returning to the UK in 1968, he joined the Law Commission, and as its editorial director took charge of preparing a new revised edition of the Acts of Parliament of England and Wales and Scotland over the next 10 years. In 1978, he became editor of Statutory Instruments, and then, once more back at the Law Commission, parliamentary draftsman, involved in preparing government legislation. He found his work satisfying and fulfilling.
A man of immense integrity, modesty, gentleness and humour, with a sweeping intellect that lasted to the end, he is survived by Christopher and me, four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and his older sister, Fay. Jane died in 2010.