page_title: Tracy Philipps
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Tracy Philipps / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Abingdon School, Park Road, Abingdon. Earliest part, to the left, is by Edwin Dolby and completed 1868-70 with the addition to the right by J G T West and completed in 1901-2 with Chapel and Gymansium at the right.
context_page_description: James Erasmus Tracy Philipps MC FRAI FRGS was a British public servant.
  At various stages in his career he was a British Army intelligence officer, colonial administrator, traveller, ethnologist, journalist, propagandist, conservationist, and secret agent. A reform-minded District Commissioner in Colonial Uganda, in later life he led efforts to create African National Parks as Secretary-General of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
  The product of an old, upper-class family, Philipps possessed determination and high self-esteem as well as a great deal of ambition – though his personal eccentricity sometimes undermined his goals.
context_section_description: Tracy Philipps was the only child of the Rev. John Erasmus Philipps (7 May 1863, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire – 3 May 1923, Salisbury, Wiltshire) and Margaret Louisa Everard (née ffolkes) (died 1954), who later married Harold Dillon, 17th Viscount Dillon after the death of her first husband. The elder Philipps was Vicar of Staindrop in County Durham and domestic chaplain to the 9th Baron Barnard. His son Tracy was born in Hillington, Norfolk, the traditional home of his wife's family. 
  The younger Philipps enrolled at Abingdon School in May 1899. From September 1904 he boarded at Marlborough College, and left in December 1906. At Marlborough he played as a forward in inter-house rugby matches. In February 1907 he was one of a few dozen Old Marlburians (among them John Feetham and Leonard Outerbridge) accepted for membership of the Marlburian Club alumni association after a meeting of the club committee held in Old Queen Street, Westminster. 
  According to the Christmas 1907 edition of The Abingdonian magazine Philipps was still undecided about which university he would attend but was nonetheless 'endeavouring to obtain a scholarship at Jesus, Cambridge' – an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful. For university he is said to have eventually studied at Oxford for a period of time. What is known for certain is that he entered Durham University in 1910. Like his father, John, and Uncle, Francis ffolkes, 5th Baronet, he was a member of Hatfield Hall and graduated in 1912 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classics. He was Secretary of Durham University Boat Club in 1911. He also served as President of the Durham Union for Epiphany term of 1912, and was Editor of The Sphinx, a student magazine with a satirical tone.
  As the President of the Union during the seventieth anniversary of its foundation, he chaired an inter-varsity debate held on Saturday 16 March 1912 at the Great Hall of University College, which featured teams from Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity College, Dublin, and Edinburgh University. Among the participants for Oxford were future MP F. Kingsley Griffith and Robert Barrington-Ward (who would eventually become Editor of The Times), while Humfrey Grose-Hodge (later Headmaster of Bedford School) was one of the representatives for Cambridge. 
  Both Griffith and Grose-Hodge, Presidents of the Oxford Union and Cambridge Union respectively, were at Marlborough at the same time as Philipps, and, as he noted in his introductory speech, in the very same form.
caption: Abingdon School, where Philipps was a pupil
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-TZ3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.0", "Image DateTime": "2011:04:23 13:42:06", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "406", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 14, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "7888", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5024", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/800", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:04:23 13:42:06", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:04:23 13:42:06", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "86/25", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "7", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2560", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1920", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "2560", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "1920", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "7740", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "52", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "47587d006f12174d639b80412fa324b7"}