Derek Oulton

Sir Antony Derek Maxwell Oulton (14 October 1927 – 1 August 2016) was a British senior civil servant, who was Permanent Secretary of the Lord Chancellor's Department and Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, United Kingdom from 1982 to 1989.

Oulton was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford and then read law at King's College, Cambridge, where he took a double first.

He was called to the bar at Gray's Inn (where he was later a Bencher), and was in private practice as a barrister in Nairobi until 1960, when he joined the Lord Chancellor's Department. He was Private Secretary to three successive Lord Chancellors, the Earl Kilmuir, the Viscount Dilhorne, and Lord Gardiner, and also served as Secretary to the Beeching Royal Commission on Assizes and Quarter Sessions, 1966–69.

He was awarded a University of Cambridge PhD degree on the basis of a jointly-authored practitioner text on legal aid and advice, and after retiring from the civil service entered academia, becoming a Research Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1990. He subsequently became a Life Fellow and, until his retirement in June 2007, supervised undergraduate students in constitutional law.

In 1955 Oulton married Margaret Oxley, who predeceased him in 1989, had four children by her, at the age of 88.