Andrew Nicholas Bonaparte-Wyse

Andrew Reginald Nicholas Gerald Bonaparte-Wyse (1 November 1870 - 1 June 1940) was an Irish civil servant, for many years the only Catholic in the Northern Ireland administration to rise to the rank of Permanent Secretary.

Bonaparte-Wyse was the grandson of Sir Sir Thomas Wyse, a Member of Parliament and educational reformer, and great-grandson of Lucien Bonaparte. His father, William Charles Bonaparte-Wyse, was a poet - he wrote in Provençal, was a friend of Mistral, and became the only foreign member of the consistory of the Félibrige, the Provençal cultural association.

Andrew was born in Limerick and attended Downside School, Bath. He received a Bachelor of Arts in French, and a Master of Arts in Classics from the University of London. After teaching for some time near Chester, in 1895 he was appointed an inspector of national schools in Ireland. In 1897 he went to France and Belgium to assist an inquiry into the primary school curriculum. In 1905 he was appointed to the central office of the Commissioners of National Education, and ten years later was appointed junior secretary, the second-ranking officer in the department.

Described by one writer as a 'diehard unionist', Bonaparte-Wyse remarked on the change of attitude in Dublin following the 1916 Easter Rising: "there is a very menacing tone among the lower classes who openly praise the Sinn Féiners for their courage and bravery". [Joseph Lee, "Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society", (Cambridge University Press, 1989), page 32.] Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, he transferred to the Northern Ireland ministry of education; he commuted to Belfast weekly from his home in Blackrock, County Dublin. In 1927 he was appointed Permanent Secretary, the only Catholic at that grade in the service (the next would be Patrick Shea in 1969) and later became civil service commissioner for Northern Ireland. He retired in 1939. He was a friend of Lord Craigavon.

Bonaparte-Wyse was a member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Knight of Malta, and a CBE and Companion of the Order of the Bath. In 1896 he married Mariya de Chripunov, daughter of a Russian count. They had three children - two daughters and a son, who served in the Free French navy during the second world war.

He died in a nursing home in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland.

References

* " [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/66886 Wyse, Andrew Reginald Nicholas Gerald Bonaparte-] " in the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography"