Papers of Sir E.T. Williams

Printed items and lecture texts on New Zealand history, 1964-1994; correspondence and press cuttings in the aftermath of the publication of the Devlin Commission report on Nyasaland, 1959-1964; article by Williams on Alfred Milner, 1954.

Sir Edgar Trevor Williams (1912-1995) was Assistant Lecturer, University of Liverpool, from 1936. In World War Two he served in North Africa, Italy and the Rhine, rising to the rank of brigadier-general. He held a seat on the United Nations Security Council Secretariat, 1946-1947. He was Warden, Rhodes House, 1952-1980, Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, 1959-1980, a Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Oxford University, 1968-1980, and Editor, Dictionary of National Biography, 1949-1980. He was a member of the Devlin Commission on Nyasaland, 1959 and a United Kingdom observer at the Rhodesian elections, 1980. He served as a trustee of the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, 1963-1991, and as Chairman, 1966-1988, and as a governor at St. Edward's School, Oxford, 1960-1995. He was Deputy Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, 1964, and was made Honorary Fellow of Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, 1975 and Wolfson College, Oxford, 1981. He was awarded a number of honorary degrees at universities in Great Britain and the United States. He was made an Officer, US Legion of Merit, in 1945, received a DSO in 1943, CBE, 1944 and CB, 1946. He was an Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford from 1980 and a Radcliffe Trustee from 1960. In 1938 he married Monica Robertson, with whom he had one daughter, and in 1946 he married Gillian Gambier-Parry, with whom he had one son and one daughter.

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

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Sketch map of the Upper and Lower Waikato and supposed Rohe Potae, with manuscript notes of tribal boundaries, c1935 (ref. MSS. N.Z. s. 7).