Andrew Bonaparte-Wyse

Who was Andrew Bonaparte-Wyse?

Andrew Reginald Nicholas Gerald Bonaparte-Wyse, CBE, CB, SMOM was a British civil servant, for many years the sole Roman Catholic in the Northern Ireland administration to rise to the rank of Permanent Secretary.

He was the grandson of Sir Thomas Wyse, a Member of Parliament and educational reformer, and great-grandson of Lucien Bonaparte. His father, William Charles Bonaparte-Wyse, was a poet who wrote in Provençal, was a friend of Mistral, and became the only foreign member of the consistory of the Félibrige, the Provençal cultural association.

Born in Limerick and educated at Downside School, he received a Bachelor of Arts in French, and a Master of Arts in Classics from the University of London. After teaching for some time near Chester, in 1895 he was appointed an inspector of national schools in Ireland. In 1897, he went to France and Belgium to assist an inquiry into the primary school curriculum. In 1905, Bonaparte-Wyse was appointed to the central office of the Commissioners of National Education, and a decade later was appointed junior secretary, the second-ranking officer in the department. Described by historian Joseph Lee as a "hardline Unionist", Bonaparte-Wyse remarked on the change of attitude in Dublin following the Easter Rising of 1916: "there is a very menacing tone among the lower classes who openly praise the Sinn Féiners for their courage and bravery".