A. P. Herbert - Education and Public Career

Education and Public Career

He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, obtaining a first class honours degree in jurisprudence. He was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1919, but never practised.

He served in the Royal Navy during the First World War. He served at Gallipoli and was mentioned in dispatches. He drew on that experience for his novel The Secret Battle, published in 1919. During the Second World War, in addition to his parliamentary duties he served in the Royal Navy on patrol-boats in the Thames. He may have been the first serving Member of Parliament to serve in the Royal Navy without being an officer: he was Petty Officer Herbert from 1940 to 1945.

In 1935, with the aid of Frank Pakenham, he became an Independent Member of Parliament for Oxford University, from where he was returned until the University seats were abolished in 1950.

He was sent to Newfoundland and Labrador in 1943 with Derrick Gunston and Charles Ammon as part of a Parliamentary Commission to investigate the future of the dominion, and supported the cause of independence over confederation as a result.

He was knighted in 1945 in Winston Churchill's Resignation Honours. The Times noted "his individual niche in the parliamentary temple as the doughty vindicator of the private member's rights, including not least the right to legislate."

Read more about this topic:  A. P. Herbert

Famous quotes containing the words education and, education, public and/or career:

    Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.
    Jane Austen (1775–1817)

    Infants and young children are not just sitting twiddling their thumbs, waiting for their parents to teach them to read and do math. They are expending a vast amount of time and effort in exploring and understanding their immediate world. Healthy education supports and encourages this spontaneous learning.
    David Elkind (20th century)

    [In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other—that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.
    James Madison (1751–1836)

    They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.
    Anne Roiphe (20th century)