biography
| name: |
Vansittart (of Denham), Robert Gilbert Vansittart, Baron
|
pronunciation:
[vansitah(r)t]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1881–1957)
|
| biography:
| British diplomat, born in Farnham, Surrey, SE England, UK. Educated at Eton, he joined the diplomatic service in 1902 and served successively in Paris, Teheran, Cairo, and Stockholm, with intervals at the Foreign Office. He was private secretary to Lord Curzon (1920–4), and in 1930 became permanent under-secretary for foreign affairs. He visited Germany, and became the uncompromising, blunt-speaking opponent of Nazism. He insisted on British re-armament, but was ignored by Neville Chamberlain, and steered into a backwater as ‘chief diplomatic adviser to the government’. He retired in 1941, and was raised to the peerage. |
|
|
