Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen

Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen KCMG (26 March 1886 – 21 March 1971) was a British diplomat, civil servant and author.

He was the second son of Reverend Reginald Bridges Knatchbull-Hugessen, son of Sir Edward Knatchbull, 9th Baronet, and his second wife Rachel Mary, daughter of Admiral Sir Alexander Montgomery, 3rd Baronet. Knatchbull-Hugessen was educated at Eton College and then at Balliol College, Oxford, where he befriended Anthony Eden and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1907. A year later, he joined the Foreign Office.

He soon obtained the chance of the paid post of an attaché and in October 1909 he went to Constantinople. Returned to England, he served in the contraband department during the First World War and after its end in 1918, when the Foreign Service and the Diplomatic Service merged, Knatchbull-Hugessen became eligible for other postings. Promoted to first secretary, he was attached to the British Delegation at the Versailles Conference in January 1919, for which he was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours.

After a stop in The Hague, followed by Paris, he became counsellor at the country's embassy in Brussel in 1926, an office he held until 1930. In 1931 Knatchbull-Hugessen was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Republics of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia until 1934; he was stationed at Riga, Latvia. Then he transferred to Tehran as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Persia. He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 1936 New Year Honours and was sent to China as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. The following year, his car was machine-gunned by a Japanese fighter aircraft, and he was hit. First hospitalised in Shanghai and then invalided home to Britain, he narrowly escaped paralysis.

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