L. G. Pine

L. G. Pine

Leslie Gilbert Pine (22 December 1907 – 15 May 1987) was a British author, lecturer, and researcher in the areas of genealogy, nobility, history, heraldry and animal welfare. He was born in 1907 in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England and died in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk in 1987. He was the son of Lilian Grace Beswetherick and Henry Moorshead Pine (a tea merchant).

From 1935 to 1940 he served as an assistant editor at Burke's Peerage Ltd. During World War II he was an officer in the Royal Air Force intelligence branch, serving in North Africa, Italy, Greece, and India; he retired with the rank of Squadron Leader. After the war and until 1960, he was Burke's executive director. Pine edited Burke's Peerage, 1949-1959; Burke's Landed Gentry (of Great Britain), 1952; Burke's Landed Gentry (of Ireland), 1958; and, Burke's Distinguished Families of America, 1939, 1947. He also edited The International Year Book and Statesmen's Who's Who, 1953-1960; Author's and Writer's Who's Who, 1948, 1960; Who's Who in Music, 1949; and, Who's Who in the Free Churches, 1951.

A graduate of London University, he became a Barrister-at-Law, Inner Temple, in 1953. Pine was a member of the International Institute of Genealogy and Heraldry, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, a Fellow of the Ancient Monuments Society, a Life Fellow of the Institute of Journalists, a Freeman of the City of London, and a Liveryman of the Glaziers' Company.

He was managing editor of a British hunting magazine, Shooting Times, from 1960 to 1964. He later authored an important book highly critical of sport hunting, After Their Blood, in which he wrote: "It is our duty as men and women of God’s redeemed creation to try not to increase the suffering of the world, but to lessen it. To get rid of bloodsports will be a great step toward this end."