Sir Christopher Meyer

Christopher Meyer studied history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and international affairs at Johns Hopkins in Bologna before joining the Foreign Office in 1966. Moscow and Madrid postings were followed by speechwriting for successive foreign secretaries and work in Brussels. He later headed the Foreign Office’s news department, returned to Washington in commercial and deputy chief roles, and served as John Major’s press secretary before becoming ambassador to Germany and then the United States in 1997. ¹

Meyer’s Washington work crossed the Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies. In his oral history, he described visiting Bush in Texas in 1998 and 1999, before the presidential election campaign, to establish contacts with a potential future administration. He also stressed the need to understand competing centres of authority within Washington. Six days after the September 11 attacks, he went to New York with his wife to assess assistance to affected British families and prepare for the prime minister’s visit. ¹

His retirement in 2003 was followed by a more public argument about Britain’s relationship with the United States. His 2005 memoir, DC Confidential, criticised Blair’s handling of the approach to the Iraq War. ²

From 2003 to 2009 Meyer chaired the Press Complaints Commission. Appearing before a Lords committee in January 2008, he defended its handling of complaints, explained the weight it gave to the wishes of the person directly affected, and described its service for preventing press harassment. His tenure also encompassed the early phone hacking scandal. Later criticism focused on the commission’s failure to expose its wider extent; Meyer’s position and the commission’s limited powers became part of the debate over press regulation. He died in 2022. ^{3, 2}