CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Alison Brimelow

British civil servant

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 28, 2025
Entity authorityQ4727037 ↗
Source-derived summary

Alison Jane Brimelow CBE (born 1949) is a British civil servant and former chief executive and Comptroller General of the UK Patent Office, now known as the Intellectual Property Office. She was the fifth President of the European Patent Office, a position she held from 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2010.

Early life and education

Born in Havana, Cuba, she is one of the two daughters of Sir Thomas Brimelow, a British diplomat, who was Permanent Under-Secretary in the British Foreign Office in 1973–75 and Member of the European Parliament in 1977–78, and Jean Cull. She holds a degree from the University of East Anglia.

Career

She joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1973. In 1976, she joined the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). She worked in a variety of Headquarters policy jobs, including private office. She joined the Patent Office in 1991, where she became Head of the Trade Marks Registry.

In 1997 she returned to DTI Headquarters to work on European and International Competition Policy. She was appointed chief executive and Comptroller General of the Patent Office in March 1999.

Editorial summary

“Alison Brimelow” enters the record as british civil servant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alison, Brimelow and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.

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—1949, 2007, 2010, 1973—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1949-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Alison, Brimelow and British.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Alison Brimelow” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Alison, Brimelow and British provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4727037. VIAF identifies the subject as 307207087. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 2007, 2010 and 1973.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. 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 “Alison Brimelow”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Alison Brimelow primary sources, Alison Brimelow archive and Alison 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 “Alison Brimelow”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Alison Brimelow” 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.