Bruce Fraser (civil servant)


Sir Bruce Donald Fraser was a Scottish civil servant in the United Kingdom.

Biography

Born on 18 November 1910, Bruce Fraser was educated at Bedford School and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He served in the Scottish Office, HM Treasury, the Ministry of Aviation, the Ministry of Health, the Department of Education and Science, the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources. He finished his civil service career as Comptroller and Auditor General, the head of the Exchequer and Audit Department from 1966–1971.

In the period from 1966–1968, Fraser served as External Auditor of the International Maritime Organization, which was formerly known as the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization.
He is probably best known now for revising Sir Ernest Gowers’ classic book The Complete Plain Words, written to teach officials and others how to write clearly. By the early 1970s the language had moved on from the post-war era when Gowers had written the first edition. The publisher, HMSO, felt the need to publish an updated version, despite some resistance to tampering with a classic.
Fraser was widely judged to have succeeded. His style is more robust than the elegant Gowers, though he is just as masterly in his use of the language. Stylistically they have been compared to George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis of the Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters. Both editions can be read for pleasure as well as instruction. Fraser enlivens the text with such howlers as:
Fraser adds, ‘Let us not be too censorious about passages like these. They are careless, of course, but they add to the gaiety of life. Let him who is quite sure he has never committed one cast the first stone.’
In its turn the Fraser edition of Plain Words grew out of date and was superseded in 1986 by a complete revision by two academics, which remains instructive but is perhaps less likely to be read for pleasure.

Honours