William Taylor (civil servant)
Sir William Ling Taylor, CBE (29 May 1882 – 5 January 1969) was a British civil servant and forester.
Born on 29 May 1882,[1] Taylor was educated at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, receiving a diploma in forestry. He worked as a land agent from 1901 to 1909, then began working for the state.[2]
Taylor entered the Forestry Commission in 1919 and served as the assistant commissioner for England and Wales from 1932 to 1938, when he was appointed a forestry commissioner.[1] He was the inaugural Deputy Director-General of the Forestry Commission, serving from 1945 to 1947 (being succeeded by Arthur Gosling),[3][4] and was then Director-General from 1947 to 1948, in succession to Sir Roy Robinson;[4][5] on his retirement, he was succeeded as Director-General by Gosling.[6] He remained on the commission in 1949.[5] He had also been in the Home Timber Production Department of the wartime Ministry of Supply from 1939 to 1941.[5]
Taylor, who had been president of the Society of Foresters of Great Britain from 1936 to 1938,[2] was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1945 New Year Honours,[7] and was knighted in the 1949 New Year Honours.[8] He died on 5 January 1969.[2]
References[edit]
- ^ a b "Taylor, Sir William (Ling)", Who Was Who (online ed., Oxford University Press, 2021). Retrieved 6 February 2022.
- ^ a b c "Sir William Taylor", The Times, 7 January 1969, p. 8. Gale CS137981991.
- ^ "Forestry Commission", The Times, 1 December 1945, p. 4. Gale CS69026177.
- ^ a b "Forestry Commission Appointments", The Times, 29 March 1947, p. 4. Gale CS69551229.
- ^ a b c "Sir W. Ling Taylor, C.B.E.", Forestry: An International Journal of Forest Research, vol. 42, no. 2 (1969), p. 202.
- ^ "Forestry Commission Changes", The Times, 1 June 1948, p. 2. Gale CS35342017.
- ^ The London Gazette, 29 December 1944 (supplement, issue 36866), p. 27.
- ^ The London Gazette, 31 December 1948 (supplement, issue 38493), p. 2.