Lord Butler with a copy of his report in London. (AFP)

London, July 14 (Reuters): Lord Butler of Brockwell witnessed the rise and fall of four British Prime Ministers and even survived a bombing in his 37-year career at the heart of Britain’s civil service.

As head of a potentially damaging inquiry into intelligence failings on banned weapons in Iraq, he walked a delicate path between spymasters uneasy about intrusions into their secret world and Prime Minister Tony Blair, determined to persuade a doubting public that war was justified.

Decades of experience in Whitehall mark Butler out firmly as a man of the establishment and his old-school style sets him apart from Blair’s new Labour government.

He was cabinet secretary, the country’s top civil servant, throughout the premiership of Britain’s Conservative “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher and her successor John Major. He served Blair briefly, retiring in 1998 barely a year after Blair won power.

He also served former Prime Ministers Edward Heath and Harold Wilson as private secretary. He was working with Thatcher in the Grand Hotel in the southeastern seaside town of Brighton when the IRA blew it up trying to assassinate her in 1984. Born in 1938, Frederick Edward Robin Butler, whose father was the managing director of a paint-making company, won a scholarship to the elite Harrow School where he became head boy.

He went on to study at Oxford University, where he graduated with a double first class degree in Classics. His civil service career began when he joined the Treasury in 1961.

He became head of University College, Oxford, in 1998 and has been a strong supporter of the government’s controversial plan for increased tuition fees for university students.

In Britain’s bible of the great and the good — Who's Who — Butler lists his interests as “competitive games”.

He has also remained true to his title — taking regular early-morning dips in the open-air swimming pool in south London's Brockwell park.