Sir John Hunt was Secretary of the Cabinet from 1973 to 1979 and one of the most exceptional civil servants of his generation. An archetypally discreet bureaucrat, he was reluctantly thrust into the limelight during the Crossman diaries furore in 1974 and 1975.

The Labour Government of James Callaghan had tried to ban a vivid and highly subjective account of the inner workings of government by the former Labour minister Richard Crossman. It was the first time that the code of Cabinet secrecy had been broken, and the governing class was appalled. An injunction sought by the Labour Attorney-General to prohibit publication of the diaries was refused by the Lord Chief Justice, and the resulting publicity ensured that the diaries became a bestseller. Amid the tumult Hunt did his best to represent the Government’s case for a ban on publication.

John Joseph Benedict Hunt was born in Minehead in 1919, the son of Major L. A. Hunt and his wife Daphne Aston-Caves. He was educated at Downside, from where he obtained a history exhibition to Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was awarded his degree in 1941. Commissioned in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, he served on convoy escort duty and in the Far East.

He joined the Civil Service in 1946 and started his career in the Dominions Office. He quickly made his mark there and after a spell as private secretary to Patrick Gordon-Walker, at that time parliamentary under-secretary of state, Hunt went as a Second Secretary to the United Kingdom High Commission in Ceylon from 1948 to 1950.

From September 1951 to October 1952 he was seconded to the Ministry of Defence on the directing staff of the Imperial Defence College. From 1953 to 1956 he was first secretary in the UK High Commission in Ottawa.

This apprenticeship in the Civil Service gave him a wide and varied background which was to be extended by the highly educative role of private secretary to Lord Normanbrook, who was at that time Secretary of the Cabinet, Secretary to the Treasury and Head of the Civil Service.

Hunt held this post, which gave him a unique insight into the working of government, from 1956 to 1958. He was subsequently to admit how much he had learnt from the formidable skills of Lord Normanbrook. It was a time of particular interest for Hunt. It was the Suez period and its aftermath, the empire was disappearing and the Commonwealth was emerging.

After leaving the Cabinet Office, he became head, as an acting assistant secretary, of one of the two economic relations divisions in the Commonwealth Relations Office before returning to the Cabinet Office for a further two-year spell, this time as a member of the secretariat, again dealing very much with overseas affairs. It was decided to broaden his career by transferring him to the Treasury, and the rest of his service was spent in one or other of the central departments of Government.

He became an under-secretary in the Treasury in 1965 on the public expenditure side and, in 1968 as a deputy secretary, he joined the newly created Civil Service Department as First Civil Service Commissioner. After a brief spell in the Treasury, he became Second Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office in 1972, dealing with overseas affairs and, in particular, EEC negotiations.

Hunt had been seen as a possible candidate for the post of Secretary of the Cabinet from earlier in his career. The experience he gained over the years had given him the wide background that was needed. Both experience and background were to stand him, and indeed the nation, in good stead during the peculiarly difficult period throughout which he was Secretary of the Cabinet. His sense of the linkage between Britain and other countries was strong, and this was of great assistance to successive prime ministers with whom he travelled as they themselves attended the everincreasing number of international gatherings overseas.

Hunt carried on the Cabinet Secretary’s well-established tradition of discretion. Yet he was always approachable and, in company with his friends, was a convivial man. He made it his business to get to know many people outside the Civil Service. He did not allow himself to become identified with particular causes, or to take a leading role on particular policies. He sought always to assist the government to get on with the business of Governing.

He was firm with ministers and was adept at sorting out problems, offering choices and, when asked, giving a clear view of his own. He disclaimed any pretensions to being an intellectual. It was true that he was not, by inclination, a theorist or conceptual thinker. What was equally true was that he had a very good mind of a direct kind which aimed sharply and precisely at the problem in hand.