Michael Alexander (diplomat)

Sir Michael O'Donel Bjarne Alexander , GCMG (born June 19, 1936 in Winchester , † June 1, 2002 in London ) was a British diplomat and fencer . He won a silver medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics and was later, among other things, ambassador to Austria .

biography

Michael Alexander was the eldest son of the international chess master and cryptographer Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander (1909–1974) and his wife Enid Constance Crichton (1900–1982). He grew up in Ireland and was educated at St Paul's School in London from 1957 to 1960 and at King's College in Cambridge . He competed in epee fencing for the University of Cambridge and won the silver medal with the British team at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome , and a year later he won the US championships.

While serving in the Royal Navy , Alexander learned Russian and was sent to the German city of Kiel to eavesdrop on radio communications from the Russian armed forces. In Germany he met his future wife, whom he married on March 18, 1960; the couple had two sons and a daughter. He continued his studies at Yale University and the University of Berkeley before joining the diplomatic service in 1962. From 1963 to 1965 he was stationed at the embassy in Moscow , then in Singapore until 1968 .

From 1968 Alexander worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office . From 1972 to 1974 he was Assistant Private Secretary to Secretary of State Alec Douglas-Home and James Callaghan . He was then Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations in Geneva , where he negotiated with the Soviet envoys on the formation of the CSCE . After brief work in the personnel department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, he worked from 1979 at 10 Downing Street as the assistant private secretary of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher .

In 1982 Alexander was appointed ambassador to Austria at a time when the main negotiations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact on the reduction of troops in Europe were taking place in Vienna . From 1986 to 1992 Alexander was Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to NATO in Brussels . After taking early retirement, Alexander became an investment banker , first with Wasserstein Perella & Co. in Eastern Europe, then with the Russian Renaissance Capital . He also chaired the Royal United Services Institute , a think tank .

swell

• Rodric Braithwaite: Alexander, Sir Michael O'Donel Bjarne (1936-2002). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of January 2011
• Short biography and interview of the British Diplomatic Oral History Program of Churchill College of the University of Cambridge
• The Guardian , Sir Michael Alexander , August 27, 2002, by Rodric Braithwaite
• Michael Alexander in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )