David Monteath

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Sir David Taylor Monteath (1887-27 September 1961) was a civil servant, working at the India Office in London, who was the last Permanent Under Secretary to India and Burma before independence meant that the post was no longer required.

Sir David himself was the son of a former Indian Civil Servant of the Bombay Cadre, who, for some time in 1903, had functioned as Acting Governor of Bombay. Sir David, after studying at Clifton and Trinity College, Oxford, in 1910, originally joined the Admiralty, but transferred the very next year to the India Office as a junior clerk.

During the war however he went back temporarily to the Admiralty, returning in 1919 as P.S. to the then Under Secretary of State, Sir Thomas Holderness, followed by Sir William Duke and Sir Arthur Hirtzel. In 1927, he became P.S. to the then Secretary of State for India, F.E.Smith, Lord Birkenhead, the great friend of Sir Winston Churchill. He continued to act in this capacity till 1931, when he was promoted as Assistant Under Secretary of State looking after the affairs of the Indian and Burmese Round Table Conferences, especially the Burmese, where he was Secretary to the Conference. In 1937, he was given independent charge of Burmese Affairs as Under Secretary of State, till 1941, when with Sir Findlator Stewart going off into what he considered to be more pressing wartime work, he became Under Secretary for both India and Burma, and here he remained till the independence of both countries made his post unnecessary.

He received numerous honours and awards after retirement, dying on 27th September 1961.