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Valentine Lawford
(1911-1991), Diplomat and partner of Horst P. HorstSitter in 1 portrait
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Charles Tilbury
06 July 2019, 12:38
Valentine Lawford (1911-1991) was a former British diplomat. Educated at Repton and Cambridge, he joined the Diplomatic Service in 1933. He served at the British Embassy in Paris from 1937 to 1940, and on his return to London was appointed Principal Private Secretary to Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretary, and then to the latter's successor, Anthony Eden, whom he accompanied to many of the wartime conferences, e.g. Casablanca, Halifax and Yalta. After the war he continued in the same office to Eden's successor, Ernest Bevin, before being posted to the UN in New York. His last diplomatic post was as First Secretary in Teheran. He resigned his position in 1950, and went to live with his friend, the photographer Horst P. Horst in Oyster Bay, Long Island, where he painted watercolours and wrote a variety of articles, as well as the autobiographical "Bound for Diplomacy", published by John Murray in 1963, about his early life. He died in Long Island in 1991.