Sir Oliver Wright

Oliver Wright entered diplomacy after wartime service in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Educated at Solihull School and Christ’s College, Cambridge, he joined the service in November 1945. His early career took him to New York, Bucharest, Singapore, Berlin, and Pretoria. He then worked in the foreign secretary’s private office and became private secretary to the prime minister, serving under both Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson. ^{1, 2}

His experience extended from European integration to Northern Ireland. After serving as ambassador to Denmark, he was seconded to the Home Office as Britain’s representative to the Northern Ireland government in 1969–70. Senior Foreign Office appointments followed, including responsibility for European affairs. He was ambassador to West Germany from 1975 to 1981 and had retired when he was recalled to become ambassador in Washington in 1982. ¹

Wright identified the supplemental extradition treaty as a particularly concrete achievement of his Washington embassy. Its purpose was to narrow the use of the political offence exception by people resisting extradition. Negotiation with the administration was followed by a harder effort to obtain Senate consent. In his oral history he credited Senator Thomas Eagleton’s support with helping secure a measure of cross party backing, drawing on his own earlier experience of Northern Ireland. ²

He also represented Britain during debates over Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev. Wright recalled urging Thatcher to take the American proposal seriously and described her exchanges with Reagan about the new Soviet leader. His account reflects his strongly favourable view of Reagan. He left Washington in 1986 and died in 2009. ²