Gurney was killed by communist insurgents during the Malayan Emergency, while serving as high commissioner in the Federation of Malaya.

[1] During World War I, he joined the British Army, and served with the King's Royal Rifle Corps from 1917 to 1920.

[2] After a brief spell at University College, Oxford, he joined the British Colonial Service in 1921, and was posted to Kenya as an assistant district commissioner.

Gurney assumed his post as the Malayan Emergency was beginning, and over the next three years he became the chief architect of British policy in Malaya.

[6] According to Communist leader Chin Peng, the ambush was routine and the guerrillas only learned the High Commissioner was among the dead from news reports.