TRIBUTE has been paid to a prominent West Devon historian and local councillor with an International career in diplomacy and politics after his death.

Dick Eberlie died after short illness on Thursday, January 11, in Tavistock Hospital aged 91.

He was well known in the area as a member of Tavistock Local History Society and wrote extensively about his and his wife’s family history in books.

The society said it was proud to benefit from his ‘wonderful writing’ about West Devon and family histories. Dick’s nephew Robin Little said: “My uncle was a well respected and well known prominent politician as a member of West Devon Borough Council, he was a leader of the council as a Conservative and a member of the South West Regional Assembly and also on Tavistock Town Council. He was also a president of Torridge and West Devon Conservatives. Before then he was on various local authorities in Kent where he previously lived.”

Dick was the fourth child of a GP and former Royal naval surgeon in Luton and lived in the South East. He edited and published his father’s memoirs in four volumes. Dick was educated at Sherborne School and read history at Cambridge University. After school he served in the Dorset Regiment. He became a Civil Servant district officer in what is now Tanzania, for the government, attorney general, Governor General and finally for the Tanganyika Tea Growers Association. He transferred to Aden when a British colony, as private secretary for the British High Commissioner for South Arabia.

He worked on complex negotiations to secure a political solution as Britain withdrew from Aden. Newly married to Joan, he came to Kent in 1967 and worked for the CBI, moving to Brussels in 1989 to the Union of Employers, which negotiated employment laws with the EU. Retiring in 1997, the couple moved to Quick’s Garden, owned by Joan’s family.

He was a West Devon councillor (1999-2007) and town councillor (1999-2015). He chaired the Conservative Party panel that chose Sir Geoffrey Cox as its 2005 General Election candidate. He helped set up Tavistock Food Bank, was an expert on local history, a trustee of Tavistock Museum, a member of the Friends of Tavistock Parish Church and of Crowndale Recreational Association. Dick’s books included a history of the life of Joan’s father William Noble. Also a book on his sister who was on General Eisenhower’s intelligence staff in the Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force and one of the few people cleared for military intelligence produced by the Bletchley Park Code Breakers.

Robin’s brother David said: “He combined a historian’s reverence for fact with a talent for evoking atmosphere. His own character was shaped by extraordinary historical circumstances and the duty to serve his country which was reflected in his memoirs.”