Warren Fisher

Warren Fisher

Sir (Norman Fenwick) Warren Fisher (1879 – 1948) was a British civil servant.

Fisher was born in Croydon, London on 22 September 1879. He was educated at the Dragon School (Oxford), Winchester College and Hertford College, Oxford University. He matriculated in 1898, graduating with a first class degree in Classical Moderations in 1900 and again with a first in Greats in 1902.

After failing to get into the Indian Civil Service and the medical examination for the Royal Navy, he came a lowly 15th in the Inland Revenue entrance exams in 1903. Sixteen years later he was Permanent Secretary of the Treasury and the first ever Head of the Home Civil Service. Fisher has been described as one of the most influential British civil servants of his generation

Fisher gave the Civil Service a cohesion it previously lacked and did more to reform it than any man in the preceding fifty years. He increased the importance of the Treasury. He advanced the interests of women in the civil service and at one point described himself as a feminist. However, he was also a controversial figure: his colleague Maurice Hankey one described him as 'rather mad' and he received criticism for his attempts to control the appointments of senior civil servants.

He married Mary Ann Lucie (Maysie) Thomas on 24 April 1906 and had two sons, but the marriage ended in separation in 1921. The entry on Fisher in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that Fisher cut his wife out of his will, and that when she died in 1970 she was almost penniless.

Offices held

Government offices
Preceded by New position	Head of the Home Civil Service 1919 - 1939	Succeeded by Sir Horace Wilson

References

• Fisher, Sir (Norman Fenwick) Warren at Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (requires login)
• Hennessy, Peter (1992), Never Again, London: Penguin Books
• O'Halpin, E. (1989) Warren Fisher: Head of the Civil Service, London: Routledge