Civil Service history will be made on Oct. 1. when Dame Evelyn Sharp becomes the first woman Civil Servant in Britain to reach the top position in a Government department. On that day she will succeed Sir Thomas Sheepshanks as ú4,500 a year Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and become boss of around 3,000 men and women Civil Servants. Fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of an Ealing vicar, Dame Evelyn makes no attempt to hide her age. She was born on May 25, 1903, and entered the Civil Service in 1926 after going to St. Paul's Girls' School and Somerville College, Oxford. When appointed Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning in 1946, she became the Service's highest paid woman. Known too as the hardest working woman in Whitehall, Dame Evelyn lists her recreations as reading and walking (preferably in mountains). The way to the stars!
