Hywel George, intrepid colonial administrator and bursar

When Hywel George arrived in 1948 as the district officer for the British Colonial Service in Jesselton, the capital of the new British protectorate in North Borneo (now Sabah), he found a community struggling to recover from the brutality of the four-year Japanese occupation. Some of his early tasks were to introduce a land registry as an administrative tool, establish a new currency, change from Japanese to British postage stamps and generally to create a “British” modus operandi.
Promotion to resident meant he moved from the town to the remote, mountainous and thickly forested Ranau region. There were no roads and he travelled around his “patch” by foot or canoe, guided by the Dusun people of Ranau, who had had little contact with the outside world. His tasks were many and varied, from administrative, for which he had training and experience, to medical, dental, agricultural and judicial matters — of which initially he knew little, but rapidly learnt much.
George was by instinct and education a geographer and he enjoyed his wide-ranging involvements in North Borneo life: he lived and worked in the shadow of the 13,000ft Mount Kinabalu, used his working knowledge of the Malay language and studied the customs of the Dusun.
The British years drew to a close in the early 1960s, when Sabah reluctantly joined the Federation of Malaya. This transition was eased by the expertise of established North Borneo “hands” such as George, whose advice was readily welcomed by the new regional government. The rest of Borneo followed a different path as part of the Indonesian state and on the Sabah/Kalimantan border there was unrest and insurgency. George the administrator became George the military liaison adviser and he made frequent use of army helicopters — one of which crashed. He was lucky to survive; the man in the neighbouring seat did not.
In 1966 he was moved to a different sphere of British influence, to St Vincent in the Caribbean, an archipelago of islands with a mix of ethnicity as a result of slavery, and sugar and banana trading, under British surveillance. As in North Borneo, George, now governor, had responsibility for all areas of life on the islands such as the intricacies of island politics, the development of tourism and the relief of child malnutrition.
All of his achievements in this potpourri, together with his years in the Far East, were recognised by his appointment as OBE and CMG. Significantly, in 1964, shortly before leaving North Borneo, George had been made a “Dato”, the title given to recipients of the Illustrious Order of Kinabalu. He was the first European to be so honoured.
The third move in his career path came when George was appointed bursar and fellow of the still-new Churchill College at the University of Cambridge. In this role, all of his administrative and personal skills came together in the energetic ways in which he helped to guide the college and its staff. He knew everyone, active and retired, and looked after them.
Born in Holyhead, Anglesey, in 1924, to William, a baptist minister, and Catherine (née Lloyd), a maths teacher, George — whose “cherubic curls” and focused approach to childhood life were well known in the family folklore — attended Llanelli Grammar School after the move to south Wales.
Aberystwyth University and a geography course were interrupted by his RAF service in the Second World War as a navigator in Canada, the US and southeast Asia. Briefly back in the UK from Borneo, during a period of study at Pembroke College, Cambridge, he married Edith Pirchl who was studying English. She was at his side through the remaining years in Borneo and the Caribbean and the move to Cambridge.
Edith survives him along with three daughters: Frances, who became a police officer, Carol, an accountant, and Tamara, a secretary in the Foreign Office.
There was a strong and persisting Welshness to George. On retirement from Churchill College he served in a variety of chairmanship roles on the council of Bangor University, his strong background in administration blending with his love of Wales — naturally, rugby was never far from his mind nor the beloved family home in North Wales. Yet George had a world view, an inquiring mind and a lively concern for the communities of people in all the diverse regions of the globe in which he found himself.
Hywel George OBE, CMG, colonial administrator and bursar of Churchill College, Cambridge, was born on May 10, 1924. He died on March 3, 2024, aged 99