The job of colonial administrator was an attractive prospect for young men who sought both adventure and public service in the far flung outposts of Empire.
Newns was devastated by the assassination in 1966 of his friend Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Prime Minister of Nigeria, with whom he had worked closely during the constitutional preparations for Nigerian independence.
He believed Tafawa Balewa's death to be not only a great tragedy for the people of Nigeria but also a huge blow to peaceful political change across the newly independent African continent.
He was responsible for introducing the system of cabinet government in Nigeria and Sierra Leone, and his methods were later copied throughout British Africa in the final years of colonial rule.
[3] Newns was Acting Governor of Sierra Leone until it was granted independence in 1961, when he stayed on for two more years to advise the new African administration, before moving to the Bahamas, where he served as Secretary of the Cabinet from 1963 to 1971.