Edward Clay

Sir Edward Clay CMG (1994) (born July 21, 1945 ) is a retired British diplomat .

Life

With a scholarship he was able to study at Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1968 he joined the foreign service. 1970 to 1972 he was employed by the British High Commissioner in Nairobi . From 1973 to 1974 he was promoted from second-class embassy secretary to first-class embassy secretary in Sofia. From 1975 to 1979 he was employed in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London . From 1979 to 1982 he was first class embassy secretary in Budapest. From 1982 to 1985 he was employed in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.

From 1993 to 1997 he was High Commissioner in Kampala . With his official seat in Kampala, he was also accredited as ambassador to the government of Rwanda from 1994 to 1995 and to the government of Burundi until 1996. The genocide took place in Rwanda from April 6 to mid-July 1994 . From 1997 to 1999 he was head of public relations at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London . From 1999 to 2001 he was High Commissioner in Nicosia . From December 2001 to 2005 he was High Commissioner in Nairobi .

During his tenure as High Commissioner in Nairobi, Clay saw how Mwai Kibaki was elected with commitments to fight corruption . In a speech in July 2004 to the British employers' association in Kenya, Clay described the administration of the Kibaki government vividly, the high government officials would eat like wolverines and vomit on our shoes . The Kenyan government felt addressed and declared him a persona non grata . The British government saw the statement as a destabilizing criticism of the form of development cooperation .

In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Sunderland .

After his retirement, Sir Edward became a member of the board of directors of Leonard Cheshire Disability, an organization against disability .

In 1969 Edward Clay married Anne Stroud. You have three daughters.

He is a cousin of the late Edward Hartley Clay, the inventor of the continuously variable transmission.

predecessor	Office	successor
Charles Augustine Kaye Cullimore	High Commissioner in Uganda 1993–1997	Michael Edgar Cook
Roger Westbrook	British Ambassador to Rwanda 1994–1995	Kaye Wight Oliver
Roger Westbrook	British Ambassador to Burundi 1994–1995	Kaye Wight Oliver
David Christopher Andrew Madden	High Commissioner in Cyprus 1999–2001	Lyn Parker
Jeffrey Russell James	High Commissioner in Kenya 2001–2005	Adam Wood

Individual evidence

1. ↑ February 6, 2008, Kenya tells former envoy Clay he is 'persona non grata'
2. ↑ http://www.patentmaps.com/assignee/Clay_Edward_Hartley_1.html