Born London, February 11, 1912.
Died Bournemouth, March 13, 2008, aged 96.
A distinguished senior civil servant, Aaron Emanuel enjoyed a successful career despite being warned that his prospects in the 1930s were dim for someone who insisted on retaining an obviously Jewish name.
The son of a Balham High Street greengrocer in South West London, he was encouraged by his headmaster to win a scholarship to the London School of Economics. A founding member of the seminal Review of Economic Studies, he gained a first-class degree in 1935.
Finding a job in Rome at the League of Nations’ International Institute of Agriculture, he met Ulla Pagel, a medical student and anti-fascist activist who had fled Nazi Germany. They married a week later.
In 1938 Aaron returned to London with his wife and young son. He joined the Ministry of Food and provided a home and haven for countless displaced and traumatised refugees, including his parents-in-law.
The family was evacuated to North Wales, where he spent his days working for the ministry and his evenings protecting the coast from would-be invasion, armed with a pitch fork, courtesy of the Home Guard.
In 1943 he was posted to the Colonial Office, where he used his gift for swift assimilation of information, negotiating skills and analytical mind. He held ultimate responsibility for economic strategies for Britain’s West African territories — Nigeria, Gold Coast (Ghana), Sierra Leone, and the Gambia — and was signatory of their bank notes. He was appointed CMG in 1957.
Having supervised their independence arrangements -— Nigeria gained independence in 1961 -— he moved to the Ministry of Health, reporting to Enoch Powell during a major and innovative period of hospital building.
But after an international career, the work seemed dull, so in 1965 he joined the new Department of Economic Affairs as Under Secretary and Head of Regional Planning. Based in Birmingham, he became chairman of the Midland’s economic planning board and the OECD committee on regional planning in Paris.
He broadened the West Midlands horizon by setting up the Birmingham branch of the European Movement and was founding chairman of the Friends of the Welsh National Opera. A frequent visitor to Greece, he became fluent in modern Greek and established the Greek Language Club.
After his wife’s death from Alzheimer’s disease in 2001, he turned to poetry and within a few months compiled two short volumes, expressing with humour and pathos his wide-ranging views on life, love, philosophy and politics.
An optimist and convinced believer in the comfort of marriage, he met and married Ruth Albert in 2003.
He is survived by his second wife, two sons, a daughter, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
