Ivan Lloyd Phillips (1910-1984) was born in 1910, the son of the Reverend A. Lloyd Phillips, then the Vicar of Ware in Hertfordshire. He was educated at Worksop College and went on to take a degree in history at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and then the Colonial Services Course at Balliol College, Oxford.

He started work in the Colonial Administrative Service in 1934, when he was posted to the Gold Coast (Ghana), first as a Cadet and later as Assistant District Commissioner. He then served in Palestine, 1938-1947, as Assistant and Acting District Commissioner. He was in the King David Hotel, Jerusalem, when the bomb planted by Jewish terrorists exploded on 22 Jul 1946, though he escaped unhurt. He was posted to the Colonial Office, 1947-1948, and then to Cyprus, 1948-1951, where he served in the Secretariat and as a District Commissioner. From 1951 to 1953, he worked in Singapore, as Assistant Secretary in the Office of the Commissioner-General for Southeast Asia, then as Secretary to the Minister for Home Affairs and finally to the Minister for the Interior, Malaya (Malaysia), 1953-1962. After his retirement, he became Secretary of the Oxford Preservation Trust, 1962-1965, and was Assistant Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Oxford University, 1965-1970. He was awarded the CBE in 1963 and the Order of the Defence of the Realm, Malaysia, in 1959. In 1941, he married Faith Macleay, with whom he had one son.