Sir Christopher Mallaby
Outstanding diplomat who advised on policy-making towards the Soviet Union and served as Ambassador to Germany and France
SIR CHRISTOPHER MALLABY, who has died aged 85, would probably have risen to the top of any career he had chosen; as it was, he became a diplomat, a formidable force in formulating policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and Ambassador to Germany and then to France.
To his contemporaries he seemed well-qualified to be permanent under-secretary in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Having been head of the key departments, he was a deputy under-secretary in the Cabinet Office when he was chosen, in 1988, to be Ambassador in Bonn at the early age of 52.
In the event, after nearly five years in Germany, spanning the tumultuous period of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990, in 1993 he went as Ambassador to France.
It was the time when John Major, as Prime Minister, was doing what he could to improve British-french relations, and under Mallaby the Paris embassy became a meeting place for the French élite and a stream of British visitors. In this Mallaby was greatly assisted by his French wife Pascale, whose father had worked for General de Gaulle in London during the war.
Determined to do something that would continue to improve the Anglo-french relationship in years to come, Mallaby promoted a postgraduate scholarship scheme, to enable talented young people from France and Britain to study for a year in the other country.
The Entente Cordiale scholarship scheme was duly announced by President Jacques Chirac and John Major in 1995.
Having arrived in France as Ambassador through the nearly completed Channel Tunnel wearing a hard hat in a luxurious colliery manrider originally intended for Margaret Thatcher, in 1996 he left after an audience with the President of the Republic at the Elysée Palace, a rare honour for a departing ambassador.
John Coles, permanent secretary in the FCO, considered Mallaby to be “one of the most remarkable and outstanding ambassadors of the post-war period”.
Christopher Leslie George Mallaby was born on July 7 1936, the oldest of three children of Major (later Major-general) A W S “Peter” Mallaby and his wife Mollie, née Jones.
In 1943 Peter Mallaby went to India on the staff of Field Marshal Lord Wavell for the war against Japan. In 1945 he was assassinated in Java while trying to negotiate a ceasefire with Indonesian nationalists prior to the return of the colony to Dutch rule. Growing up without a father gave Christopher early on a sense of responsibility and duty.
He was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, where he read Modern Languages and History with two years’ National Service in the 9th Lancers in between. During his last year was successful in the entry competition for the Foreign Office, which he joined in 1959.
His first diplomatic work was as a member of the British delegation at the UN General Assembly in New York in October 1960, when he saw Khrushchev take off his shoe and bang the desk with it in fury at Harold Macmillan’s remark about a Moscow-centred empire.
Mallaby was sitting close enough to Khrushchev to be able to scotch rumours that the Russian leader had a hole in his sock. Another day, having endured a six-hour speech by Fidel Castro, he wrote a summary in a couple of hundred words.
In 1961 he went to Moscow as private secretary to the Ambassador, Sir Frank Roberts, who at once identified him as a future star. He was serving as deputy cultural attaché when in October 1962 Khrushchev began to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, triggering the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War – in the defusing of which Mallaby unwittingly played a small part.
When he had invited Moscow embassy colleagues to his wedding in Paris in September 1961, the only one able to accept had been Rory Chisholm, the MI6 head of station, who had recruited the Russian military intelligence officer, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, as an agent.
Penkovsky was due in Paris with a delegation on the day of Mallaby’s wedding. He met Chisholm in Paris, and secret information that he provided was to assist President Kennedy in handling the Cuba crisis the next year.
From Moscow, Mallaby returned to London, then in 1966 was sent to West Berlin to represent Britain in day-to-day discussions with the city’s government on matters affecting the city’s three occupation zones.
After a further period in London working on Soviet foreign policy and a course at the Harvard Business School, he became deputy director of the British Trade Development Office in New York.
From 1975 to 1977 he was again in Moscow, as head of chancery, where, finding the Cold War thawing slightly, he established good contacts with people who had a say in Russia’s relations with the West, and with leading dissidents including Andrei Sakharov and Roy Medvedev.
On returning to the FCO in London he became head of the Arms Control and Disarmament department at a time when Britain had begun negotiations with Russia and the US for a comprehensive test ban treaty, a successful conclusion to which was keenly desired by Britain’s then Labour government.
Good progress was made, but once Ronald Reagan had become President they were set aside. The new Conservative government in London did not object, and so ended the prospect of concluding a treaty at that time.
Mallaby moved to be head of the East European and Soviet department (1979-80), then head of the Planning Staff (1980-82), the FCO’S internal think-tank. Here he was in his element, frequently summoned to No 10 to hammer out policy with Mrs Thatcher and to explain what was going on in Russia, Soviet affairs having become his main professional interest.
In 1982 he also coordinated the work of the FCO in trying to reach a diplomatic solution to the Argentine occupation of the Falkland Islands, David Gillmore, later permanent secretary, recalling how Mallaby “used to present a new plan every morning before eight o’clock. He was quite remarkable in producing imaginative new ideas. But none of them ever turned out to be acceptable to the Argentines. More fool them.”
In 1982 Mallaby went to Bonn as minister (number two). Three years later he returned to London to be a deputy secretary under Robert Armstrong in the Cabinet Office, once more at the heart of policymaking under Mrs Thatcher, who took a shine to him and sent him back to Bonn as ambassador in 1988.
Tall, lean and perfectly turned out in diplomatic uniform when required, Mallaby was highly regarded by the British military authorities in West Germany. The Germans appreciated him too, and Mallaby regarded this ambassadorship as the most interesting and challenging appointment of his career.
He had great faith in the strength of Germany’s post-war democratic institutions and impressive access to the leadership of all parties, which he used to good effect during the period of reunification. Yet his positive view of German reunification did not appeal to Mrs Thatcher.
A month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, she scribbled on one of his reports, with evident disapproval: “Christopher Mallaby seems to welcome reunification.” She distrusted Germany because of the two world wars, and Chancellor Kohl, she said to Mallaby, was “so German”.
His recommendation, that Britain should endorse the idea, met with a message from No 10 that he showed an “alarming” lack of understanding of British policy.
Reunification came, none the less, in October 1990, shortly before Mrs Thatcher left office, and Mallaby became Ambassador to a united Germany.
He had no differences with London when ambassador to France, and on his departure from Paris, having had to address problems posed by mad-cow disease to British beef exports, he was praised by Jacques Chirac for his decisive role in improving British-french relations. His work, said the President, had been “outstandingly successful”.
Mallaby appeared the epitome of a British ambassador. Urbane, courteous, informed and fluent in many languages, he believed diplomacy to be about dialogue and persuasion. Some found him daunting, as he appeared to have read everything and thought of everything before anybody else, but his personality was attractive and he was approachable, unpompous, fun, and interested in other people. His staff found him inspiring.
After retirement at 60, Mallaby became a managing director in the investment banking division of UBS, the Swiss bank. He took an active part in deliberations at Chatham House and elsewhere.
An enthusiast for contemporary art – on his first posting to Moscow he spent his kitting-out allowance not on crockery but on a painting – he was a trustee of the Tate Gallery at the time of the establishment of Tate Modern. He was also chairman of the Trust of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer for 14 years.
He continued to give support to projects in the field of Francobritish relations and for many years had a house in France.
He was appointed CMG in 1982, KCMG in 1988, GCVO in 1992 and GCMG in 1996. From 2005 he was Chancellor of the Order of St Michael and St George. He was a Grand Cross of the Order of Merit (Germany), and a Grand Officier of the Légion d’honneur. He published his memoirs, Living the Cold War, in 2017.
Christopher Mallaby married, in 1961, Pascale Françoise Thierrymieg; they had a son and three daughters.