During the First World War he served incognito as a rating in a naval anti-aircraft defence unit,[2] and as a fitter in an aeroplane manufacturing works at Shoreditch, East London.

Vyner's early years as Rajah (a role he performed in tandem with his younger brother, Bertram, in accord with their father's wish)[citation needed] saw a boom in Sarawak's rubber and oil industries and the subsequent rise in the Sarawak economy allowed him to modernise the country's institutions, including the public service, and introduce a penal code based on that of British India in 1924.

[3] Vyner ran a hands-off and relatively popular administration that banned Christian missionaries and fostered indigenous traditions (to an extent: headhunting was outlawed).

13, Albion Street, Bayswater, W2 on 9 May 1963, four months before Sarawak, Malaya, North Borneo and Singapore joined to form the Federation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963.

The anti-cession movement came to a head in 1948 when the second British governor to Sarawak, Duncan Stewart, was assassinated by a young nationalist named Rosli Dhobi in Sibu.

[6] Vyner, his father, his brother Bertram, the Tuan Muda, and Rajah James, are buried in St Leonard's Church in the village of Sheepstor on Dartmoor, Devon.