Edgar Williams

Edgar Trevor Williams was born on 20 November 1912, the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Tettenhall College, Staffordshire[2] and then at King Edward VII School in Sheffield from 1928 to 1931. He obtained a Postmastership at Merton College, Oxford, and took a First in History in 1934.[3] After a lectureship at Liverpool University he returned to Merton in 1937 as a junior research fellow.[3][4]

Williams was Chief of Intelligence to General Montgomery in his North African Campaign against the German army under Erwin Rommel in 1942. He first encountered a vehicle of the Afrika Korps at Agheila in Tripoli, Libya in February 1941 (both fired and both missed), though his report that there were now German as well as Italian forces in North Africa was initially doubted.

In his memoirs (1958, Da Capo) Montgomery describes how Williams pointed out a crucial weakness in the deployments of the German and Italian troops, exploited in the decisive Second Battle of El Alamein. Williams remained with Montgomery as his Intelligence Chief for the rest of the war.[2] He was mentioned in despatches three times during the war, as well as being awarded the DSO in 1943, appointed CBE in 1944 and CB in 1946.[1]

Williams was elected a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford in 1945.[3] From 1949 to 1980 he was joint editor (with Helen Palmer and later with Christine Nicholls) of the decennial supplements to the Dictionary of National Biography. He went on to become warden of Rhodes House in 1952,[3] a position which he held until 1980.[5] As secretary to the Rhodes Trustees from 1959,[3] he was also concerned with the selection and subsequent well-being of nearly 200 Rhodes scholars per annum (one of whom was Bill Clinton, 1968-1970).[4]

Williams worked for the United Nations Security Council Secretariat in New York from 1946 to 1947.[3] In 1959 he was a member of the Devlin Commission on Nyasaland,[3] and in 1980 an observer at the Rhodesian elections.

At Oxford, Williams was a member of the Hebdomadal Council, a Curator of the Chest (or finance committee),[3] and latterly a Pro-Vice-Chancellor. He also served as a Radcliffe Trustee, as a member of the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust,[1] and as chairman of the Academic Advisory Board which planned Warwick University. He served for many years as senior treasurer (and in 1966 to 1968 as president) of the Oxford University Cricket Club. He was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Oxfordshire in 1964, and was knighted in 1973.[1]

Williams was married twice. In 1938, he married Monica Robertson; they had a daughter. In 1946, he married Gillian, younger daughter of Major-General M D Gambier-Parry; they had a son and a daughter.[2][3]

A portrait of Sir Edgar Williams hangs in Rhodes House, Oxford.