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===Civil service career===
In 1902 Gowers graduated from Cambridge with a First in the Classical Tripos, and attended [[Wren and Gurney|Wren's]], a civil service [[cram school|crammer]] in London, to study for the highly competitive Civil Service Examination.<ref>Scott, p. 14</ref> He also enrolled for the Inner Temple Bar exam, which he passed in 1906.<ref>Scott, p. 15</ref> In December 1903 he passed the Civil Service Examination, and embarked on the career that led to the claim that he "may be regarded as one of the greatest public servants of his day."<ref name=dnb/>
Gowers entered the home civil service as an upper division clerk in the Department of [[Inland Revenue]]. He moved to the [[India Office]] in September 1904, and from March 1907 to October 1911 he was private secretary to successive [[Under-Secretary of State for India|Parliamentary Under-Secretaries for India]], most notably [[Edwin Samuel Montagu|Edwin Montagu]]. In October 1911 he was promoted to [[HM Treasury]] as private secretary to the [[Chancellor of the Exchequer]], [[David Lloyd George]], at a time when Lloyd George was introducing his controversial National Insurance Bill.<ref name=gviii>Gowers (2014), p. viii</ref> In November 1912 Lloyd George appointed him to the [[National Insurance|National Health Insurance Commission]], as one of a team of promising young civil servants (including [[John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley|John Anderson]], [[Warren Fisher]], [[Arthur Salter, 1st Baron Salter|Arthur Salter]], and [[Claud Schuster, 1st Baron Schuster|Claud Schuster]]) nicknamed the "Loan Collection" as they had been hand-picked from across the civil service.<ref name=gviii/> Gowers wrote later, "This gigantic task of bringing the National Health and Unemployment Insurance Acts into operation taught the Service what it could do, and the control of the whole of the social and economic life of the nation during the war drove home the lesson."<ref>Scott, p. 32</ref> The members of the loan collection were deployed to other departments during the First World War. While nominally continuing to hold his post, Gowers was attached to the [[Foreign Office]] working under [[Charles Masterman]] MP at [[Wellington House]], Britain's top secret wartime propaganda unit.<ref>Scott, pp. 35–47</ref>
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