As former military man, who did a stint in civil-war torn Northern Ireland, you might have thought John Drinkwater would have found civil service life a tad mundane.

But Mr. Drinkwater, who retired as Cabinet Secretary last month, has clearly relished his time at the heart of Government and is a strong advocate of the life of a bureaucrat.

“I think the civil service is an extraordinary organisation,” he said. “You can do almost anything from destroying bugs to prosecuting people in the courts.

“The opportunities are extraordinary and the training opportunities second to none.

“The other satisfying part of being a civil servant is the unexpected always occurs.

“You are faced with fresh challenges you haven’t come across before and you have to get on and deal with it. The base closure is an example.”

Mr. Drinkwater, 62, was at the heart of bases negotiations, working alongside Grant Gibbons who was the Minister responsible for the task.

“I set up the base transition team which later became the Bermuda Land Development Company,” he said.

Up against a determined US administration only prepared to fix environmental problems if they were an immediate threat to health, negotiations were a challenge.

“The whole period leading up to the closure of the bases was an extremely exciting time to be working for the Government in the Cabinet Office,” he added.

“The presence of the Americans contributed to the economy and there was the potential loss to the economy of them departing.

“There was what to do with the large parcel of land which was going to be returned to Bermuda. There was some key decisions to be made.

“We had never run an airfield. But suddenly people had to be found to run it.”

Certainly Mr. Drinkwater was used to military bases having served three years in the Bermuda Regiment on secondment from the British army in the early 1970s. He then came back as staff officer in 1980.

He made the move into the civil service in 1983 when he became co-ordinator of security services for seven years working under Home Affairs minister Sir John Sharpe and Sir John Irving Pearman.

He then became Assistant Cabinet Secretary under Cabinet Secretary Ken Richardson — right in the heart of the John Swan era.

“I enjoyed working with Sir John,” Mr. Drinkwater said. “I thought he was a good leader — very open to everybody but at the same time he was firm.

“He would listen to arguments but was very happy making decisions.”

A private person who shuns the limelight Mr. Drinkwater is happy to let ministers get the credit if things go well, particularly as they have to put up with the pitfalls. “If things don’t go well the minister gets the blame.”

But tough decisions are the key to good Government.

“You cannot please all the people all the time. If you are never criticised it could be argued you are not doing anything which allows you to be criticised.”

However, he says civil servants have to exercise caution.

“I understand politicians have different agendas and I understand when they are sometimes critical of the civil service.

“Once a minister said to me, ‘The trouble with civil servants is they are not prepared to take risks’.

“My response to that minister was that I don’t agree it’s necessarily a good thing for civil servants to be risk takers as any risks they take are with their minister’s futures and not their own. I think he saw that was true.”

Asked about the role of partisan appointees in the upper echelons of Government he said: “Ministers always need political advice and civil servants aren’t always the best people to give that advice.”

He certainly worked with a lot of them. He served under Premier Swan and David Saul briefly before moving to Labour, Home Affairs and Public Safety as Permanent Secretary in the mid-1990s, where he worked with Quinton Edness, Maxwell Burgess and then Paula Cox.

“I loved it. The responsibilities were so diverse. You really didn’t know how the day would unfold every day you drove to work.

“There were always labour issues, immigration is high-profile, sensitive situations. Add to that Public Safety and Police — fascinating.”

Despite his retirement he remains the consummate civil servant.

Still dressed in a stiff white shirt, suit and tie when he visited The Royal Gazette offices last week he remains loyal to a fault and utterly unwilling to spill the beans on any of his former employers or what went on in Cabinet.

But he is more forthcoming on his own circumstances and is keen to point out he retired, rather than resigned, after 23 years in the civil service.

“I felt it was time to have less pressure,” he said. “Over the preceding six years the pressure had taken its toll. I needed a change.

“I don’t want to wake up in the morning and check the newspaper to see what the latest crisis is going to be.”

So he took advantage of the change in Government to make the break.

He once feared his career might be cut short much sooner.

“In the weeks leading up the 1998 election a senior member of the Government of the day said to me ‘Of course, if there is a change of Government you won’t last three months’.”

He recalls meeting with a group of civil servants prior to the election when it looked likely there could be change.

He had prepared two briefs — one for a new minister from the UBP and one for a new PLP Minister. “When the result came through I was a very apprehensive man. People all view change with suspicion.

“I well remember my first meeting with my new Minister Paula Cox and we spoke at length and I gave her my brief.

“We spoke about all the issues confronting the ministry. She outlined her priorities, what changes she could foresee.

“Both of us worked very hard on building a solid relationship. I think very quickly we had an excellent working relationship.

“I enjoyed working with her enormously and have a great deal of respect for her.

“The challenge was to really understand what the Government wanted to do — not just superficially but in some depth.

“Only when you have that understanding can you assist in the formulation of policy.”

He said one of most difficult challenges for a civil servant is to understand how their Minister or Premier feels about issues.

“Because you are frequently called upon to speak about issues and draft correspondence on the Premier or Minister’s behalf. Unless you understand how they feel about things then you can’t do that effectively.”

It meant winning trust again every time there was a reshuffle and the boss changed.

After initially fearing he might be axed under the PLP, he found his reputation grew, culminating in the unexpected call to become Cabinet Secretary in 2000 when Jennifer Smith chose him for his experience.

He overcame some reluctance to move from his beloved Home Affairs ministry.

And when Stanley Oliver retired in 2002, Mr. Drinkwater also became Head of the Civil Service.

He says no one ever accused him to his face of being biased although occasionally politicians tried to drag him into the political fray.

“When I was appointed Permanent Secretary to the Labour, Home Affairs and Public Safety the shadow minister stood up in the House — and I happened to be in the House at the time — and described my appointment as a ‘dark day for Bermuda’.

“And when Alex Scott became Premier, I reminded him of that and we had a laugh about it. You recognise that’s politics.”

And he clearly values his spell working under the PLP. “During the time I worked with this (PLP) Government, I learned to look at life in a very different way,” he said. “And I will always be very grateful for the opportunity to have done that because I think it has made me a better person.”

Let loose from the disciplines of bureaucratic life, he is not sure what he is going to do.

“I can probably get away with being a ‘kept man’ until the new year but after that I don’t think I can push it any further. I am also going to write my book.”

It will be a fiction novel about a small British island in the Pacific with a population of 70,000.

“It has to be a work of fiction because no one would believe some of the stuff that has actually happened.”