Master's Installation Party 2024

Tickets: £43
Ticket deadline: 25 June 2024
Venue: Stationers' Hall

Schedule:
5.30 pm Common Hall
6.35 pm Installation and Ceremony
6.45 pm Drinks Reception and canapes
9.00 pm Event ends

Master's Installation Party 2024
Celebrates the Installation of our new Master

Following Common Hall, Liverymen, Freemen and their guests are invited to stay on for the Master’s Installation Party, with a champagne canapé reception in the garden.

This year, if elected, the new Master will be Paul Wilson (pictured above).

Paul served in the British Army from 1975-1985. He was posted successively to Cyprus, the British Army of the Rhine, Northern Ireland and BRIXMIS (the British Commander-in-Chief’s Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany) where he acted as an interpreter in Russian and German languages. In 1985 he left the army to enter the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. There, he worked on the Eastern Europe and Southern Africa desks and served as First Secretary (Political) at the British High Commission in Islamabad, Pakistan from 1991-93. In 1992 he was one of the diplomatic staff on the Foreign Office Mission to the new Mujahideen government in Kabul.

In 1994 Paul joined De La Rue Plc, the UK high security printers. He held a series of appointments in De La Rue’s banknote division, including that of Director of Sales, responsible for the company’s relationships with central banks around the world.

In 2003 he was appointed Managing Director of De La Rue’s Identity Systems business and oversaw the company’s development of biometric passports which eventually led to the award of the UK biometric passport contract in 2008-9.

From 2007 until his retirement in 2015, Wilson was responsible for De La Rue’s relationships with the British Government and Parliamentarians.

He has chaired the Stationers’ Company’s Library and Archives Committee, Hall and Heritage Committee, Hall Committee and most recently the Hall Project Executive Committee which was responsible for the Vision 350 project.

Paul is a trustee of Bound By Veterans, a charity offering wounded, injured and sick veterans the opportunity to learn bookbinding skills.

He has had two volumes on monetary history published and his short monograph on the early modern Stationers’ Company Pilgrims, Profit and Print: The Stationers of London and the English Settlement of North America (2019) has been described as ‘an important contribution to scholarship in this fascinating area’.

Dress Code: Business Attire