Robert Drayton

Sir Robert Harry Drayton CMG (14 April 1892 - 20 February 1963), was a lawyer and a senior colonial civil servant who worked in Palestine, Tanganyika, Ceylon, Jamaica and Pakistan.

At the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the Public Schools Battalions, serving as a sergeant, and was appointed as a lieutenant in the Machine Gun Corps, fighting in France from January 1916 to September 1917.

On 16 October 1920 he married Gertrude Edith Phillips (1886–1967), an Australian who had seen war service as a theatre nursing sister with ANZAC forces in Gallipoli, at Christ Church, Holborn, Middlesex.

They had a son and two daughters: Denys (1923–2012), a major in the British India Army (7th Gurkha Rifles), Aide-de-camp to the British High Commissioner in Malaya, Sir Henry Gurney and Superintendent of the Uganda Police Force; Dianne (1928–2015), a senior administrative assistant at Reuters and the founding secretary of the Reuter Society; and Ruth.

In 1950 Drayton returned to Asia as chief draftsman to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, serving in the role for three years.