[1][2] He was the son of Sir John Evelyn Shuckburgh,[3] an under-secretary at the Colonial Office, and was educated at Winchester and King's College, Cambridge.
After heading up three successive regional departments, he was recommended in 1951 for the post of Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; Ernest Bevin had retired in March of that year, to be succeeded by Herbert Morrison for a seven-month period, followed by Anthony Eden when the Conservative Party took power that autumn.
In the succeeding three years Eden and Shuckburgh were involved in the post-war reorganisation of Western Europe which led up to the creation of the Common Market, in negotiations in Korea and Indochina, and in making an agreement with Egypt over the withdrawal of British forces from the Suez Canal Zone.
[1] After a period at the Imperial Defence College, Shuckburgh served at the headquarters of NATO in Paris, in 1958, as Assistant Secretary-General.
[5] Shuckburgh's papers, including personal diaries and letters, are held at the Cadbury Research Library (University of Birmingham).