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Percival Waterfield

(1888–1965), civil servant

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ18821826
Source-derived summary

Sir Alexander Percival Waterfield, KBE, CB (16 May 1888 – 2 June 1965), commonly known as Percival Waterfield, was an English civil servant. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he entered the civil service in 1911 and served as the Treasury Remembrancer for Ireland from 1920 to 1922; from 1939 to 1951, he was First Civil Service Commissioner. Waterfield was one of 4 members of the Woodhead Commission (officially the Palestine Partition Commission) of 1938. His son was the diplomat John Waterfield.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Percival Waterfield” is (1888–1965), civil servant. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Percival, Waterfield and civil, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1888, 1965, 1911, 1920—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1888. For this dossier, Percival, Waterfield and civil is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “(1888–1965), civil servant” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18821826. VIAF identifies the subject as 53108247. The Library of Congress control number is n85019399. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1888, 1965, 1911 and 1920.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Percival Waterfield”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Percival Waterfield primary sources, Percival Waterfield archive and Percival research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Percival Waterfield”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Percival Waterfield” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.