Sir Douglas Veale CBE (2 April 1891 – 27 September 1973) was a British civil servant and university administrator, who served as Registrar of the University of Oxford from 1930 to 1958.
Early Life
Douglas Veale was the youngest of three sons of a Bristol solicitor and his wife, Edward and Maud Veale. He studied at Bristol Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, gaining a degree in classics in 1914. He had joined the Territorial Force on 17 September 1910 when he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 4th (City of Bristol) Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, having previously risen to the rank of cadet colour-sergeant in his school's Officers' Training Corps unit. He was promoted to lieutenant on 31 March 1911.
First World War Service
Called up on the embodiment of the Territorial Force on the outbreak of the First World War, he served with 1/4th Battalion in France from 31 March 1915. He was promoted to substantive captain on 27 May 1915. He was invalided home and appointed adjutant of the regiment's reserve battalion on 27 July 1916.
Civil Service
He stepped down as adjutant on 18 May 1917, and was then allowed to take up an appointment as a civil servant with the Local Government Board, later the Ministry of Health. He was private secretary to various Ministers of Health between 1921 and 1928, then private secretary to Neville Chamberlain, helping to implement the Local Government Act 1929. He was appointed commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) on 1 March 1929.
