Conrad Corfield

Sir Conrad Laurence Corfield KCIE, CSI, MC, (15 August 1893 – 3 October 1980), was a British civil servant and the private secretary to several viceroys of India, including Lord Mountbatten. He also was the author of the book The Princely India I Knew, from Reading to Mountbatten.

Early life and wartime service Corfield was born in Heanor, Derbyshire on 15 August 1893, the son of the Rev. Egerton Corfield, a Church of England missionary and later rector of Finchampstead, Berkshire, in England. He was educated at St. Lawrence College, Ramsgate, where he would later serve as a member of the governing body. During the First World War, he saw active service on the Western Front. He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 16 March 1915 (antedated and made substantive from the same date on 4 August 1916), and promoted to the temporary rank of captain on 17 June 1915 (pay and allowances from 12 January 1916).

As a lieutenant (temporary captain), he was decorated with the Military Cross (MC) on 16 November 1916:

Corfield was subsequently appointed the adjutant of his battalion, and was promoted to the substantive rank of captain on 29 August 1917 (precedence from 1 June 1916). He relinquished his commission on 1 September 1921.

Civil service career

In the British Raj In 1920 Corfield joined a batch of recruits into the Indian Civil Service.

After initial training in the Punjab, in May 1921 Corfield was posted to New Delhi to serve as assistant private secretary to the Viceroy, Lord Reading. After holding this position for eighteen months, he was posted back to the Punjab for district work. In 1925 he was selected to join the Foreign and Political Department of the government of India, and his first appointment was that of Secretary to the Agent for the Western India States Agency. He felt these records could be used by the new government of India as blackmail against the princes due to their often racy and scandalous content.

In Britain On returning to Britain, Corfield had several occupations such as governor and vice-president of St Lawrence College, Chairman of Wokingham Division Conservative Association from 1950 to 1954 and chairman of Yateley Industries for Disabled Girls from 1954 to 1964.

Personal life Sir Conrad Corfield (middle) and wife Lady Sylvia in 1971 at the wedding of June Corfield's first son.

Corfield firstly married Phyllis Betha Pugh, the daughter of L. P. E. Pugh, KC on 22 December 1922. The couple had one daughter and a son. After his first wife died in 1932, Corfield remained a widower for several decades until marrying Sylvia Phyllis Mary Hadow, the widow of Lt. Col. Charles O'Brian Daunt, on 16 September 1961.

Sylvia died on 1977 and Corfield died on 3 October 1980 at the Warren Lodge Rest Home, in Finchampstead.

Decorations Corfield received the following decorations from the British government: World War I MC, Military Cross 1937 CIE, Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire 1942 CSI, Companion of the Order of the Star of India 1945 KCIE, Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire