Lord Shawcross, chief prosecutor in the post-war trials of the Nazis and Chancellor of Sussex University from 1965 to 1985, died yesterday at his home near Eastbourne, aged 101.

He spent most of his life living in Sussex, at Uckfield, Cowbeech and Friston Place, a secluded Tudor house which was his family home.

Lord Shawcross was a chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, calling the Nazi criminals "black-hearted murderers, plunderers and conspirators of which the world has not known their equal."

Hartley Shawcross was an MP from 1945 to 1958 and a leading member of the post-war Labour government as President of the Board of Trade and Attorney General.

He was a director of EMI, Rank Hovis McDougall, Hawker Siddeley, Times and Observer Newspapers; chairman of the Press Council and the City Panel on Takeovers and Mergers.

He successfully prosecuted acid bath murderer John Haigh at Lewes. He was made a life peer and appointed to a number of "odd jobs", as he described them in his memoirs.

He chaired the Medical Research Council from 1961 to 1965.

Lord Briggs, who was the university's vice-chancellor during his chancellorship, said: "I shared a friendship with him and his family and last saw him at his 100th birthday party, when we had an interesting chat about our memories of Sussex."

Vice-chancellor Alasdair Smith said: "We are proud that he was part of the university life for more than 20 years."