The Earl of Cromer

George Rowland Stanley Baring, third Earl of Cromer, moved between banking and public service. Born in 1918 and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he joined Baring Brothers as a clerk before the Second World War. He served with the Grenadier Guards and reached lieutenant-colonel. After the war he became a managing director of the family bank. ^{1, 2}

From 1959 to 1961 Cromer served in Washington as economic minister, head of the Treasury and Supply Delegation, and Britain’s executive director at the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and International Finance Corporation. He then governed the Bank of England until 1966 before returning to Barings. His 1968 Per Jacobsson lecture commentary defended international capital movements and warned that central bank cooperation could not indefinitely finance a country’s persistent deficit. He also criticised the damage to confidence caused by sterling’s devaluation. ²

Cromer returned to Washington as ambassador in 1971. A declassified record of his June 1973 conversation with Henry Kissinger shows him conveying London’s questions about improving Britain’s nuclear deterrent. When Kissinger referred to warheads, Cromer distinguished the weapons Britain already possessed from the delivery technology it was seeking. The discussion concerned the possible terms and political obstacles to American assistance. ^{3, 4}

The same meeting ranged across proposed Atlantic consultations, the sale of Rolls-Royce Spey engines to China, Soviet diplomacy, and Cambodia. Cromer undertook to relay Kissinger’s replies to Cabinet Secretary Burke Trend and seek London’s response on export restrictions. ⁴