A parson son for the Lincolnshire Wolds, Garvey was admitted on a choral scholarship at Trent College where he studied from 1916 to 1923. He then entered University of Cambridge, where he read history and got a B.A. in anthropology, while preparing to take the civil service examination, hoping to join the Indian Service. Getting involved in breaking the 1926 general strike, he didn't find time to study for this examination, and instead applied for a position at the Colonial Service. He accepted a position in the Solomon Islands Protectorate, sailing sailed from Southampton to Fiji in November 1926. Garvey spent six years in the Solomons, most of them as a district officer for the Santa Cruz Group, on Vanikoro, more than 500 miles away from the colony's headquarters à Tulagi. Amidst other occupations, he trying to find archeological evidences of the French explorer Lapérouse's presence on the island. In July 1932, he accepted an appointment as Assistant secretary at the Western Pacific High Commission, in Suva, Fiji where he married in October 1934 the daughter of a local doctor. In 1938-1939, he served as acting Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony, a senior position usually not offered to people in their thirties. Back to Suva to his former position, he was sent in late August 1939 to Tonga to persuade Queen Salote to declare war to Nazi Germany if war was to break out in Europe. His success had him made a few months later a member of the Order of the British Empire. In Spring 1940, while on his way back to Britain on leave, he was recalled to serve as acting Resident commissioner in the New Hebrides, at a time of turmoil as this Franco-British territory was the first to follow Charles de Gaulle's appeal to fight against Philippe Pétain's government. Garvey assisted the French Commissioner Henri Sautot in his quick and bloodless overthrowing of Vichy power in New Caledonia. In October 1941, he was again sent to the Gilbert and Ellice colony to put phosphates-rich Ocean Island "on a war-time footing" as its "Supreme Co-Ordinating Authority", until Japan's advance led to the island's evacuation in March 1942. Garvey then left Fiji for a new position in East African Nyasaland, where he didn't arrive before October before of war-time troubles. He experienced difficulties adjusting to this African setting after 16 years in the Pacific but was soon offered the position of Administrator of Saint Vincent, in the West Indies. The Garvey family left Nyasaland for England in February 1944, Ronald sailing for St. Vincent in September.
Governor
Garvey started his work of Administrator of Saint Vincent in 1944. He moved on to be Governor of British Honduras in 1949; there he had to contend with a general strike and the need to devalue the local currency. He launched one of the first credit unions in British Honduras to protect poorer people from loan sharks. He then served as Governor of Fiji from 1952, where he demonstrated his considerable public relations skills, until his retirement in 1958. In retirement he became Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man: he launched major initiatives there in the early 1960s to increase tourism including the establishment of a new casino and promoting the local tax incentives. He also sent the Home Office a Manx cat to replace the one they had lost. He subsequently wrote a memoir entitled Gentleman Pauper published in 1984. He is buried in Wrentham cemetery in Suffolk.
Family
He married Patricia Dorothy McGusty, daughter of Dr. V.W.T. McGusty, a District Medical Officer in Fiji, on 30 October 1934; they had one son, Anthony, and three daughters
