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Philip Wilkinson (banker)

English banker (1927–2007)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 17, 2025
Entity authorityQ7184559 ↗
Source-derived summary

Sir Philip William Wilkinson (8 May 1927 – 23 August 2007) was a British banker. He worked for NatWest all his life, rising to CEO during NatWest's period of greatest prosperity in the 1980s.

Early life

Wilkinson was born in Leyton, United Kingdom. His father worked for the Metropolitan Water Board. He was educated at Leyton Sixth Form College.

Career

Wilkinson started his working life as a clerk for the Westminster Bank in 1943, aged 16. He was called up for the Royal Navy shortly before the end of World War II and commissioned as sub-lieutenant. He served at Londonderry in Loch-class destroyers on anti-submarine duty.

Returning to the bank in 1948, he rose through the clerical ranks and became secretary to the chief general manager in 1963. He was appointed branch manager for High Wycombe from 1966 to 1968 (when Westminster Bank merged with National Provincial to form NatWest), and was then seconded for three years to Orion Bank, a consortium of NatWest and international shareholders.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Philip Wilkinson (banker)” is english banker (1927–2007). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Philip, Wilkinson and banker, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1927, 2007, 1943, 1948—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1927-05-08. For this dossier, Philip, Wilkinson and banker is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “english banker (1927–2007)” 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

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7184559. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2007, 1943 and 1948.

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
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  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Philip Wilkinson (banker)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Philip Wilkinson (banker) primary sources, Philip Wilkinson (banker) archive and Philip 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

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  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Philip Wilkinson (banker)” 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.