The district officer - the D.O. - was the pivot of the British Colonial Administration throughout the British Empire, as was his counterpart in India - immortalized in Philip Woodruff's "The Men who Ruled India". The D.O. who was both administrator and magistrate and the essential link with the professional and technical services and essentially, with the indigenous population - the 600,000,000 people they served - in an empire of service rather than domination. In this book, Anthony Kirk-Greene, who was himself a distinguished member of the Nigeria Service, draws upon personal memoirs, diaries, private and official papers, and his own experience, to paint a vivid picture of the service and a never-to-be-repeated episode in British history.

This is the story of a young man's experience of the Colonial Service in Nigeria from 1937 to 1946. This was the time of the watershed between the policy of trusteeship, which was the guiding principle of the Colonial Service before World War II, and the constitutional changes leading to independence after the war.
After apprenticeship, the author joined the Nigeria Regiment in 1939, and describes the East Africa campaign of 1940-1941. Returning to civil duty in 1942, he was posted to the remote, conservative sheikdom of Bornu, near Lake Chad, Maiduguri, capital of Bornu. After leave in 1944, the author returned with his wife and was posted on a station on the upper reaches of the River Benue.
Twenty-five years later, he returned to Nigeria briefly, as director of an international company, and found enormous change in the environment, the political, economic and social scene, such as to leave him with deep unease.

In this book, Anthony Kirk-Greene, who served as a district officer in Nigeria for over a decade, draws upon personal memoirs, diaries, private and official papers, and his own experience, to paint a vivid picture of the service from his perspective. Symbol of Authority explores the socio-educational status of district officers, their recruitment and training, and what they did in both their work and leisure.

The British Empire was the most powerful empire known to the modern world, but power and confidence were ebbing by the mid-20th century. Aspects of Empire, a second anthology of writings from the Corona Club journal, shows the British Parliament, Government, the Colonial Office and leading actors preparing for decolonisation. This was against a backdrop of ever-growing needs in the territories when imperial resources were increasingly limited - reflecting Britain's diminished position especially following World War II. There were the political demands of future self-government, the implication of Colonial Development and Welfare acts, defence, policing and even 'emergencies'. And all these factors impacted upon work in the territories and looked forward to the end of the Colonial and Overseas Services in the vital field of district administration and in the professional and technical departments. Here is an illuminating account of the management of the end of a global empire and preparation for self-government - a drama no less striking for being couched in form of Parliamentary debate, and state papers.