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Rex Browning, who has died aged 78, was a diplomat and the least
bureaucratic of bureaucrats; hugely popular with his staff, he displayed
an infectious irreverence that perhaps cost him the permanent
secretaryship he deserved.
Rex Alan Browning was
born on July 22 1930 and educated at Bristol Grammar School, from which
he won a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, to read History – a
passion that remained with him, together with music, until the end of
his life. He entered the Civil Service, first the tax inspectorate and
then, in the dying days of Empire, the Colonial Office.
In 1964 he joined the new Ministry of Overseas Development, set up by
Harold Wilson when Labour came to power, to run Britain's first overseas
aid programme. With Barbara Castle as minister and the huge, bellowing
Sir Andrew Cohen as permanent secretary, it inevitably became known as
the Elephant and Castle.
The staff included a heady mixture of grizzled former colonial servants,
with gripping Buchan-like stories of the Somaliland Camel Corps, and
idealistic young aid enthusiasts for whom Browning's energy and
commitment quickly became an inspiration.
In 1969 Browning was sent to Singapore to run the British aid programme.
Two years later he returned to the ministry in London, then was sent to
Washington as counsellor at the embassy and Britain's alternate director
at the World Bank.
This was a key period for the bank: its president, Robert McNamara –
atoning, some said, for his time as Defense Secretary during the Vietnam
War – was transforming it from a staid lending organization into an
agency focused on the world's poor.
At the same time the oil price rise in 1973 led to the collapse of the
Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system and to major changes in the
international financial architecture. Browning was in his element in
Washington, respected by McNamara and his fellow directors, in sympathy
with McNamara's aims, and working late into the night and over weekends
as the financial crisis unfolded. Britain's role was crucial at this
time, and Browning's within it.
But in Washington, as throughout his career, there was more to
Browning's life than work. He and his New Zealand-born wife Paula were
at the centre of a musical and amateur dramatic circle in Washington, as
they had been in Singapore; and the Civil War battlefields in Maryland
and Virginia fed his insatiable enthusiasm for history. Nor was
Browning, in those different times, averse to other pleasures. "A glass
of lunch, my dear fellow?" was a regular refrain.
Browning returned to the Ministry of Overseas Development in 1976 in the
key post of under-secretary for Asia.
He was seconded to the Department of Trade in 1978, then returned to
what, under the first administration of Margaret Thatcher, had become
the Overseas Development Administration of the Foreign Office. Browning
was promoted to deputy secretary in 1981 with every expectation of
further promotion to permanent secretary. But it was not to be.
The straight talking, the enthusiasm for aid, the witticisms, the
irreverence that so endeared him to colleagues – and, in particular, to
those fortunate enough to work for him – did not fit so well with Mrs
Thatcher's regime.
He was appointed CB in 1984, but when the permanent secretaryship fell
vacant two years later Browning was passed over and took early
retirement.
The break was clean and the regrets fleeting. Rex and Paula Browning
retired to Devon where, once again, they quickly became the centre of an
active and accomplished musical circle.
Rex Browning bore his final illness with stoicism and humour, a glass of
whisky or two and the novels of Proust. "Apart from my terminal illness
I am in excellent health," he told an inquirer. He died at home on May
29 surrounded by the family he loved in a house filled with music.
Published June 18 2009
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