A start in freedom / Hugh Foot

SIP1822

KIRKUS REVIEW
This record of a life in the British Colonial Service is long on earnestness but it does point up the fact that the British gave their administrators authority at a very early age and usually were not disappointed in the results. Sir Hugh springs from a talented family that has always been prominent in law and politics. He parted company from his brothers by going to Cambridge and into a career which has stretched from the post of a junior official in Palestine to that of Governor-General of Cyprus and lately to high responsibilities in the United Nations. His genius, like that of many another Britisher, is to make haste slowly and his efforts have led, as his brother Michael rather cruelly has written, to ""working himself out of one job after another (Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Nigeria, Jamaica, Cyprus) and hauling down the flag at increasingly impressive ceremonial occasions..."" Probably his greatest challenges were in Cyprus, where he served for the best part of four years, beginning in 1957, and which he left in a state of uneasy quiet after a fierce and bloody rebellion. In 1962, Sir Hugh resigned from the British Mission to the United Nations in disagreement with the Government's policies towards Africa in general and Southern Rhodesia in particular. Of interest particularly for its account of how Great Britain paved the way for the independence of its colonies.
Publisher: Harper & Row