496 • SINCLAIR, SIR JOHN
sions and his recommendation for disciplinary action, he was asked
by the committee ‘‘to look further into the question of Ministerial
responsibility, and inter-departmental coordination of certain types
of covert operation.’’ None of this, however, was Sinclair’s fault but
as he was anyway ready to retire, having committed himself to SIS
for only 10 years when he was originally persuaded to join, but when
he announced his departure, many erroneously concluded that Eden
had sacked him. Sinclair then withdrew to East Ashling Grange, a
large nine-bedroom Georgian house north of Chichester, and became
a nonexecutive director of the Universal Asbestos Company and
Chinnor Industries, firms run by former wartime friends.
In his retirement Sinclair continued his lifelong interest in cricket
and took an active role in the church as a member of the board of
Bishop Otter College, a seminary in Chichester for those entering the
Anglican priesthood. He was also chairman of the Diocesan Dilapi-
dation Board, which dealt with housing for country parsons, and kept
up his links with the army as colonel commandant of the Royal Artil-
lery, for a few years running the Royal Artillery’s charitable fund. In
1976, a few weeks short of his 80th birthday and his golden wedding
anniversary, he went into St. Richard’s Hospital in Chichester for a
checkup and died there. He was buried at nearby Funtington Church,
and his funeral proved to be a large occasion as he had requested not
to have a memorial service; Oldfield attended representing the ser-
vice, along with Menzies andDick White.
As was the custom at the time, Sinclair’s obituaries omitted any
reference to his service in SIS, where he was fondly remembered for
having introduced some of the reforms—of pay, conditions, and pen-
sions for staff—that Menzies had neglected. Noting that Sinclair’s
obituaries had ended with his role as DMI, Oldfield rectified the
omission by writing to theTimesanonymously and somewhat myste-
riously mentioning his ‘‘Government service for a further ten years,’’
to set the record straight, recording Sinclair’sdetermination to build an organization which by its esprit-de-corps and fair
conditions would attract the right type of young recruits. He laid the foun-
dations which have stood the test of time and for which those who served
with him are grateful. He expected of others the same high same standards
he set himself; weakness was not for him nor for those who served with
him.