William Ormsby-Gore

William Ormsby-Gore's part in Cypriot antiquities was policy. As First Commissioner of Works for the five years before May 1936 he was responsible for public buildings and ancient monuments and advised on those in Cyprus, and in 1933 he authorised Sir Charles Peers to visit the island, a visit that took place in the spring of 1934¹.

In May 1936 he became Secretary of State for the Colonies. After five months in the post, according to Nicholas Stanley-Price, he circulated a memo on the underfunding of monuments in Cyprus and Malta, arguing that neglect had political consequences and pointing to the example of France, the Americans and the Italians¹.

He knew the Cyprus situation as a member of the Cyprus Committee. In 1936 he sent Governor Richmond Palmer a sharp nine-page letter about the Department of Antiquities. It said that any Director of Antiquities must have the full support of the Cyprus government, that Rupert Gunnis, valuable but not an archaeologist, had interfered too much in the department, and that Arthur Hubert Stanley Megaw's position as Director should be real as well as nominal. Ormsby-Gore asked that Gunnis forfeit his stipend of £150 and that his role be set down in writing¹. Stanley-Price writes that Gunnis's part in antiquities declined sharply because Ormsby-Gore was determined to settle the matter, and adds that Palmer himself later recorded a denunciation of Gunnis that included suspected illicit trading in antiquities for personal profit². That suspicion concerned Gunnis, not Ormsby-Gore.