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Name: LE BRETON, David Francis Battye CBE

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Nee: son of Francis Hemery Le Breton

Birth Date: 2 Mar 1931 Kensington, London

Death Date: 2023 Westerham, Kent

First Date: 1932

Last Date: 1969

Profession: Colonial Administrative Service, Tanganyika 1954-63 (DO, Magistrate, Private Secretary to Governor 1959-60) and HM Diplomatic Service 1963-87 and served in Zanzibar, Zambia, Hungary, Anguilla, Kenya and The Gambia (High Commissioner 1981-84)

Area: 'Kimwondo', Endebess, Kitale; Tanganyika

Married: In Newcastle upon Tyne 5 Apr 1961 Patricia June Byrne b. 27 June 1934 Hartlepool

Children: Christopher David Glossop (1964-22 June 2021 New Zealand), Caroline Patricia (1966), Sarah Elisabeth (1967)

Book Reference: EAWL, Burke

School: Kenton College, Nairobi; Winchester and New College Oxford

General Information:

Secretary/Treasurer of the Overseas Service Pensioners' Association (OSPA) and Editor of the Association's Journal, the "Overseas Pensioner" 1992-2017.
The Times 10 June 2023: When David Le Breton was taken on in his early thirties by the Foreign Office in 1964 it was in the face of particularly fierce competition. Although he had ten years under his belt in the Overseas Civil Service, he was nonetheless up against hundreds of former British administrators freshly relieved of their roles in the newly independent former colonies. Yet his kindly, reserved, softly spoken manner and level-headed intellect honed by an education at Winchester and Oxford — and not forgetting his fuent Swahili — stood David in good stead. He was ready, like the late Queen who was only five years his senior, to dedicate a life to service.   David spent the bulk of his career at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. An initial, albeit brief, period in Zanzibar during its 1964 revolution was followed by three years in Zambia, where he helped to set up the British high commission. Over the next two decades a series of postings, largely overseas, included Anguilla, Kenya and the Gambia, where in 1981 he reached the position of British high commissioner. The only non-Commonwealth country in which he served was Hungary in the early 1970s during the Cold War. In 1978. David was appointed CBE for his commitment to service through a period of political instability and intimidation in Anguilla.

For David, who was born in 1931 and raised in Kenya, it was Africa that was home. His father, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Le Breton, had arrived in Kenya in 1921 under the soldier-settlement scheme, and ran a remote farm on the lower slopes of Mount Elgon. His mother, Elisabeth (née Trevor-Battye), was the daughter of the Victorian explorer Aubyn Trevor-Battye. At the age of six David was sent to a boarding school in Kenya, and on to Kenton College, Nairobi. In 1944, at 13, he was placed on a convoy of ships travelling north while his mother waved from the docks, not to hear from him for six weeks. He spent a couple of terms at Bryanston School, Dorset, before starting at Winchester. With little natural talent for sport and a bewildered attitude to English culture, David did not find Winchester easy and later rarely
referred to his education there. The school suggested he apply to Oxford to read PPE and he won a place at New College. After graduation, anticipating a career back in Africa, he completed an additional year's Colonial Service training at Oxford, joining the newly styled Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service a year after Queen Elizabeth's coronation. He spent three years as an administrative district officer in three remote districts of southern Tanganyika before moving to Dar es Salaam, where in 1959 he became the private secretary to the governor in the run-up to independence and beyond.
    In 1958 David met Patricia Byrne, newly arrived to teach English at a secondary school in Dar es Salaam. They married in 1961 and raised three children: Christopher, an environmentalist who predeceased David in 2021; Caroline, an artist and interior designer; and Sarah, a former international development worker. Although retirement came in 1987, David continued to work for a further 32 years. He was secretary of the Overseas Service Pensioners' Association and Benevolent Society, a post he would hold for 26 years and during which he kept the British government accountable in accepting responsibility for the payment of pensions of several thousand former Colonial Service members. He also applied his executive skills to local government as a district and parish councillor and to protecting the English countryside through the CPRE, the countryside charity. from Brazil to Zimbabwe, Asia and New Zealand, adding to his library on African and colonial affairs, and wielding his African panga machete in his garden.

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