Trivial Fond Records – Sir Laurence Guillemard (1937) (1st ed)

S$86.00

Trivial Fond Records – Sir Laurence Guillemard (1937) (1st ed)

S$86.00

The memoirs of Laurence Guillemard, Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner of the Federated Malay States from 1920-1927.

Title: Trivial Fond Records

Author: Sir Laurence Guillemard

Publisher: Methuen & Co., 1937. First edition.

Condition: Hardcover, no dust jacket. Very good. Slight bumping to corners, sporadic foxing to pages and edges. Inscription in pencil on ffep. With black-and-white plates. 187pp., 9″x6″.

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The memoirs of Laurence Guillemard, Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner of the Federated Malay States from 1920-1927. A significant portion of this book is dedicated to his life in Malaya (more than a third of the book), in which he describes the region as well as the administrative and constitutional issues that he dealt with, such as:

“The colony officials spoke with humorous tolerance of the men in the states as wild denizens of the jungle, whose ideas of business were amateurish and childish.
The men in the states regarded their brothers in the colony as pedantic and narrow-minded bureaucrats who spent their days on office-stools penning tiresome and often unnecessary minutes.”

About Laurence Guillemard (from Wikipedia):

Sir Laurence Nunns Guillemard GCMG KCB (7 June 1862 – 13 December 1951) was a British civil servant who served as high commissioner in Malaya when it was under the British Empire.

Guillemard entered the civil service in 1886 and joined the Treasury in 1888 where he was a Private Secretary to both Chancellors of the Exchequer, Sir William Harcourt and Sir Michael Hicks Beach between 1892 and 1902. In May 1902, he was appointed Deputy-Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue and Chairman of the Board of Customs in 1908.

He was appointed Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Federated Malay States in 1920 and retired from the civil service in 1927.