Sir Amherst Selby-Bigge, 1st Baronet
British civil servant and author (1860–1951)
Sir Lewis Amherst Selby-Bigge, 1st Baronet (3 April 1860 – 24 May 1951) was a British civil servant, barrister, and scholar who was Permanent Secretary at the Board of Education between 1911–1925.
Early life and education
Selby-Bigge was born at Oakwood House in Beckenham, Kent, the second son of Charles Selby Bigge , of Longhorsley, Northumberland, and Katharina Ogle.
He was educated at Winchester College, followed by Christ Church, Oxford, where he earned a B.A. in 1883 with first-class honours in Literae humaniores. He was elected a Fellow of University College, Oxford in 1883 and was a tutor in philosophy for several years. He published multiple works on the doctrines of British moralists and edited their works, including David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, with full index. He earned an M.A. from University College in 1886.
Career
Selby-Bigge was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1891. Three years later, he began his career in the civil service as Assistant Charity Commissioner (1894–1902), before joining the Board of Education, serving successively as Assistant Secretary (1903–07), Principal Assistant Secretary (1907–11) and Permanent Secretary (1911–25). Reading law proved to be greatly beneficial in his future work researching legislation for the Board, such as the Education Act 1902 and the Education Act 1918.
According to his obituary,
[Selby-Bigge] made his way through a highly controversial atmosphere with assurance and tact, and his legal training enabled him to clarify the maze of trusts set up under the old system and to bring order into a chaotic situation.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sir Amherst Selby-Bigge, 1st Baronet” is british civil servant and author (1860–1951). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Amherst, Selby-Bigge and Baronet, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18674096. VIAF identifies the subject as 23226391. The Library of Congress control number is n80049831. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1860, 1951, 1911 and 1925.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sir Amherst Selby-Bigge, 1st Baronet” 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.