Michael Palairet

Sir Michael Palairet KCMG (29 September 1882 – 5 August 1956) was a British diplomat who was minister to Romania, Sweden and Austria, and minister and ambassador to Greece.

Palairet was the son of Charles Harvey Palairet, by his marriage to Emily Henry. After his mother's early death, in 1888 his father married secondly Nora Hamilton Martin. Palairet was educated at Eton College and spent time in France and Germany to improve his languages before joining the Diplomatic Service in 1905.

Palairet was posted to Rome in 1906, Vienna in 1908, Paris in 1913, and Athens in 1917. In 1918 he was posted back to Paris for the Peace Conference. After a brief time in the Foreign Office in London, he returned to Paris in 1920 with the rank of First Secretary. In 1922 he was posted as Counsellor to Tokyo where he and his family survived the Great Kanto earthquake on 1 September 1923, which devastated Tokyo and destroyed the British embassy. He moved on to Peking in 1925, returned to London in 1926, and returned to Rome again in 1928.

As an experienced middle-rank diplomatist, Palairet then became minister to Romania in December 1929. Here their charm and hospitality and keen interest in Romanian culture won the Palairets a wide circle of friends. Prince Carol, who returned from exile and became king in 1930, showed no grudge at having been requested to leave England in 1928 because of his alleged involvement in a plot to place him on the Romanian throne. Good Anglo-Romanian relations, both political and commercial, were established, but German economic and political penetration had become menacing before Palairet left for in 1935. — Peter Neville in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

...
Wikipedia