Horace Wilson (civil servant)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Horace John Wilson, GCB, GCMG, CBE (1882-1972) was a British government official who had a key role in the appeasement-oriented government of Neville Chamberlain just prior to World War II.

[edit] Career

He entered the British Civil Service in 1900, and eventually rose to several high posts:

• Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Labour, 1921-1930
• Chief Industrial Adviser to the Government, 1930-1939
• Seconded for special service with Stanley Baldwin, 1935-1937
• Seconded for special service with Neville Chamberlain, 1937-1940 (during this period he had a room at 10 Downing Street)
• Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, Head of the Civil Service, 1939-1942

He was awarded a knighthood in 1924.

In late-September 1938 just prior to the Munich Agreement, Wilson was Chamberlain's emissary to Hitler. He was charged with communicating to Hitler the British Cabinet, France and Czechoslovakia's rejection of Hitler's demands to annex the largely ethnic German Sudetenland. In the course of speaking with Hitler, it was Wilson who also delivered the most significant diplomatic communication between Germany and Britain since the close of the First World War; that should Germany invade Czechoslovakia and France declare war against Germany, Britain would go to war against Germany alongside France.

[edit] In Fiction

Wilson is a key character in Michael Dobbs' novel Winston's War. In the book Wilson is portrayed as an arch-manipulator who has the telephones of all potential enemies to Neville Chamberlain tapped and will use any methods he can to get rid of Winston Churchill.