Stephen Boys Smith: Through Consular Eyes: Thomas Sandwith, British Levant Consul 1855-1891

This was the 4th joint event with the Levantine Heritage Foundation (www.levantineheritage.com/).

Stephen Boys Smith, born in 1946, studied history at Cambridge and did a Masters in history at the University of British Columbia. He spent his career in the British Civil Service. He chiefly worked in the Home Office – most frequently on police and national security issues but also on prisons, probation, criminal law policy and finance. He also served in the Central Policy Review Staff in the Cabinet Office (“The Think Tank”), in the Northern Ireland Office and in the Treasury. He was Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary for Northern Ireland in the early 1980s and few years later to the Home Secretary. As a Director General in the Home Office in his three last posts he was head of the Police Department, head of the department responsible for immigration, asylum and nationality, and finally head of the department responsible for policy on counter terrorism, organised crime and drugs. After retirement he undertook several reviews for the British Government, mainly concerned with national security, and was secretary of the Independent Monitoring Commission in Northern Ireland. He was appointed a CB in 2001. He is the author of Thomas Sandwith: A British Consul in the Levant, 1855-1891 (The Isis Press, Istanbul, 2020); co-edited and contributed to Studies on Ottoman Nicosia (The Isis Press, 2019); and has contributed to the ODNB.