Frank Kenyon Roberts

Ambassador Roberts on board the royal yacht Bloodhound with Prince Philip at Kiel Week (right, front)

Sir Frank Kenyon Roberts GCMG , GCVO (born October 27, 1907 in Buenos Aires , † January 7, 1998 in Kensington , London) was a British diplomat .

Life

Frank Kenyon Roberts was the son of Gertrude Kenyon, Blackburn and Henry George Roberts, Preston. He studied at Bedales School, rugby and Trinity College (Cambridge) and entered the foreign service in 1930. From 1932 to 1935 he was employed in Paris and from 1935 to 1937 in Cairo . In Cairo he married Celeste Leila Beatrix Shoucair († 1990). In 1937 he was employed in the Foreign Office .

From September 1939 to 1940 he was Liaison Secretary to the Anglo-French Supreme War Council and acted as an interpreter at the third session of the Supreme War Council , which met on November 17, 1939 at 10 Downing Street .

From July 18 to October 27, 1941 he was Edvard Beneš's confidante . From 1940 to 1941 he was an employee of the Central Department of the Foreign Office, which he headed from 1942 to 1945.

From January 1945 to 1947 he was envoy to Moscow and advised Winston Churchill at the Yalta Conference .

With George F. Kennan , he analyzed Soviet foreign policy and developed containment policy .

From 1947 he was Ernest Bevin's private secretary and was involved in negotiations during the Berlin blockade .

From 1949 to 1951 he was Archibald Nye's deputy as High Commissioner in New Delhi .

From 1951 to 1954 he was Deputy Secretary of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office . From 1954 to 1957 he was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Belgrade , Yugoslavia .

From 1957 to 1960 he was the representative of the British government on the North Atlantic Council . From 1960 to 1962 he was ambassador to Moscow. From 1963 to 1968 he was ambassador in Bonn .

He was also President of the Atlantic Treaty Association from 1969 to 1972 .

In 1946 he became Companion, 1956 Knight Commander and 1963 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George . In 1965 he was inducted into the Royal Victorian Order as the Knight Grand Cross . He sat on the board of directors at Mercedes-Benz and Unilever , for which his father had also worked in Argentina .

literature

• Sir Frank K. Roberts , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 13/1998 of March 16, 1998, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Janus: British Diplomatic Oral History Program

predecessor	Office	successor
RH Bruce Lockhart	British Ambassador to Czechoslovakia July 18 to October 27, 1941	Philip Bouverie Bowyer Nichols
William Ivo Mallet	British Ambassador to Yugoslavia 1954–1957	John Walter Nicholls
Patrick Reilly	British ambassador to the Soviet Union 1960–1962	Humphrey Trevelyan
Christopher Steel	British ambassador to Germany 1963–1968	Roger Jackling