BETWEEN 1985 and 1994 Christopher Priston was the highly successful director of the Invest in Britain Bureau at the Department of Trade and Industry. Under his leadership more than 40 per cent of the total inward investment into the European Community came to the UK, and these years saw the arrival of firms such as Ford (US), Daewoo (Korea), IKEA (Sweden) and Matsushita (Japan).
Priston was a civil servant with a rare experience in sales and marketing. His entry as principal into the Civil Service after success in the open competition in 1973 followed a business career that included ten years with Fisons and Courtaulds.
In his early years at the Department of Trade and Industry he spent time working in a senior policy capacity, in divisions dealing with European matters, and represented the government in Brussels and at the multilateral trade negotiations in Geneva.
He was also part of a three-man delegation who undertook a round-the-world mission to gauge what the Commonwealth’s attitude would be if the UK were to pull out of the EEC.
On promotion he was made responsible for commercial relations and exports for the Far East and South East Asia, which involved an unusual amount of media exposure. In this role he drafted the economic co-operation agreement with China.
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In the early 1980s he helped to secure government backing for a number of innovative projects, including Birmingham airport’s magnetic levitation rapid transport system and the Docklands Light Railway. He was selected by ministers to head the Invest in Britain Bureau in 1985.
Christopher Priston was born in Ipswich, the only son of the Rev Stewart Browne Priston, Rector of Bacton, Suffolk, and formerly Archdeacon of Valparaiso and the Falkland Islands.
Educated in Buxton, Derbyshire, and at St John’s School, Leatherhead, he followed his father’s footsteps to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read natural sciences and economics.
His first appointment after graduation was a temporary one as a chemistry teacher in London, where he quadrupled the A-level pass rate. This gave him a valuable insight into the world of teaching that he put to good use during his last job, as bursar and secretary to the governors at King’s College School, Wimbledon, from 1995 until his premature retirement in 2002.
In many respects he was an unconventional bursar and was exceptionally blessed with a vision of the wider picture. He refused to allow detail to obstruct the greater good and had a genuine and overriding love of education, regularly reminding the governing body that a school exists for the benefit of its pupils.
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Priston was married in 1965 to Dr Ann Priston, OBE, a consultant forensic scientist who survives him, along with their son and daughter.
Christopher Priston, Director of the Invest in Britain Bureau, 1985-94, was born on July 21, 1938. He died of cancer on June 11, 2003, aged 64.