Sir William John Peel DSNB DLJ (16 June 1912 – 8 May 2004) was a British Conservative politician who served as member of parliament for Leicester South East from 1957 to 1974. He also became an honorary member of the Brunei aristocracy, near the conclusion of his life.
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Early life
Peel attended Wellington College and Queens' College, Cambridge. His first career was in the Colonial Service from 1933 to 1951; he survived imprisonment by the Japanese during the Second World War from 1942 to 1945, when he was stationed in Singapore, to later serve terms from 1949 to 1951, as British Resident in Brunei and then Resident Commissioner in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony (now Kiribati and Tuvalu) before retiring in 1952.
Diplomatic career
Peel was the British Resident in Brunei from 1946 to 1948, upon the establishment of civilian authority following Second World War. Peel, who was always helpful to Brunei history students, was also a part of a British Parliamentary delegation visiting the Sultanate in 1959. While in Brunei, he made friends with Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin III (the father of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah) who later invited old acquaintances to his own suite at the Dorchester; in 1969, he named Peel an honorary member of the Brunei aristocracy. Brunei was politically unstable during the residential era, with British administration in both internal and external affairs. In an August 1995 interview with Peel, he stated: