Account by Henry Townsend Bourdillon of his service at the Colonial Office

"British and French colonial policy": original manuscript and typed corrected copy of an account relating to service as assistant under-secretary of state at the Colonial Office, 1954-1959.

Henry Townsend Bourdillon (1913-1991), CMG (1952), was educated at Rugby School, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1937 he was appointed assistant principal at the Colonial Office; he became acting principal in 1940. For a short period during the early 1940s, Bourdillon was lent to the Foreign Office (1942), the Cabinet Office (1943), and the Ministry of Production (1944). He returned to the Colonial Office in 1944 where he later held the posts of assistant secretary (1947-1954) and assistant under-secretary of state (1954-1959). In 1959 he again left the Colonial Office for a short time when he was appointed Deputy UK Commissioner for Singapore; he returned to the Colonial Office in 1961. In 1962, Bourdillon was appointed under-secretary at the Ministry of Education (1962-1964) and in 1964 became assistant under-secretary of state at the Department of Education and Science (1964-1973).

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Collection level description created by Marion Lowman, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

Administrative/Biographical History compiled with reference to Who Was Whoand A Biographical Dictionary of the British Colonial Service 1939-1966 by A.H.M. Kirk-Greene (1991).

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Listed as no. 565 in Manuscript Collections in Rhodes House Library Oxford, Accessions 1978-1994 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1996).

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Deposited with the Oxford Development Records Project.