NEWS: Former soldier leads Stationers’ company

A former soldier, diplomat and senior executive of De La Rue PLC , the banknote printer, has been elected as Master of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers

Paul Wilson was born in London and educated there and at North Sydney Boys High School in Australia. Enlisting in the British army in 1975, he served in Cyprus, Northern Ireland, the British Army of the Rhine and BRIXMIS , the British Commander-in-Chief’s mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany, where he acted as an interpreter in Russian and German.

Transferring to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1986, he was appointed desk officer for Eastern Europe and Southern Africa and then was seconded to the Home Office for 18 months. In 1991 Paul was appointed First Secretary (Political) at the British High Commission, Islamabad, Pakistan where, among other duties, he monitored developments in Afghanistan. In 1992 he was a member of the Foreign Office mission to establish diplomatic relations with the new Mujahideen government in Kabul.

In 1994, following the end of his posting to Islamabad and his return to London, Paul left the Foreign Office to join De La Rue PLC, initially to act as its sales representative to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. In 2000 he was appointed sales director of the company’s banknote division, responsible for sales and relationships with central banks around the world. In this role company business took him on frequent business trips to Africa, the Middle East, Central and Southern Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. In 2003 Paul was appointed Managing Director of De La Rue Identity Systems and over the next four years was responsible for strengthening the business and developing products which led subsequently to the award of the UK government’s biometric passport contract, establishing De La Rue as the leading commercial passport printer in the world at that time. In 2007 Paul handed over the passport business to establish the position of De La Rue’s Director of Government Relations, responsible for relationships with ministers and civil servants in Whitehall and MPs in Westminster. In 2015, he retired from De La Rue.

Paul became a freeman of the Stationers’ Company in 2010 and a liveryman the same year. From an early stage he joined the Library and Archives Committee. In 2013 he was elected to the Court and successively chaired the Library and Archives Committee, the Hall and Heritage Committee, the Hall Committee and the Hall Project Executive Committee which oversaw the remodelling of the central ‘link block’ of Stationers’ Hall as well as the modernisation of various of its facilities. Among the very wide range of the Stationers’ Company’s activities, Paul is particularly interested in the company’s promotion of the study of the history of the book. His own studies in this area resulted in Pilgrims, Profit and Print – The Stationers of London and the English Settlement of North America. Given his background in the army, Paul also has a personal interest in the company’s support to the Royal Marines and the Special Forces Support Group.

When not engaged on Stationers’ Company activities, Paul spends most of his time writing and has had two books published on monetary history. He is married to Alison , a former officer in the army, whom he met on the village green at Amport, Hampshire, close to their current home. They have one son, Alex, an economics undergraduate who takes some satisfaction in correcting his father’s shaky understanding of that subject.