Warren Fisher (civil servant)

thumb|Warren Fisher

Sir Norman Fenwick Warren Fisher (22 September 1879 – 25 September 1948) was a British civil servant.

Fisher was born in Croydon, London, the only son of Henry Warren Fisher. He was educated at the Dragon School (Oxford), Winchester College and Hertford College, Oxford. He matriculated in 1898, taking a first Classical Moderations in 1900 and a graduating with a second in Greats in 1902.

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.

His elder son Norman Fisher (d. 1982) made his career in the Royal Navy, surviving two submarine disasters before the war and attaining the rank of captain; his second son Robin died in 1988.

Offices held

References

Bibliography

• Fisher, Sir (Norman Fenwick) Warren at Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (requires login)
• Hennessy, Peter, Never Again (London: Penguin Books 1992)
• O'Halpin, Eunan, Head of the Civil Service: A Study of Sir Warren Fisher, (London: Routledge 1989)
• 'Sir Warren Fisher, Head of the Civil Service 1919 – 1939', PhD thesis by Eunan O'Halpin