William Montagu-Pollock

Sir William Horace Montagu-Pollock (12 July 1903 – 26 September 1993) was a British diplomat who was ambassador to Syria, Peru, Switzerland and Denmark. Career William Horace Montagu-Pollock was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He joined the Diplomatic Service in 1927 He served at Rome, Belgrade, Prague, Vienna and Stockholm, where he was chargé d'affaires during the Second World War. He then worked at the Foreign Office as the first Head of the Cultural Relations Department, for which he was appointed CMG in the King's Birthday Honours of 1946. The CRD had its origins in a small Foreign Office section created to give political direction to the British Council and to manage the political and policy aspects of the growing scale of organised international intellectual, cultural, societal and artistic contacts, with a view to promoting Allied goodwill; but it became, almost by accident, a small British front-line unit in a clandestine struggle to prevent Moscow's domination of the world of international movements, federations and assemblies – what would later be called ‘the battle of the festivals’. Later, Montagu-Pollock was head of the General Department of the Foreign Office. In 1950, Montagu-Pollock was appointed Minister to Syria, upgraded to Ambassador in 1952. In December 1953, he was appointed to be Ambassador to Peru ; While he was in Peru he was knighted KCMG in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1957. In May 1958 he became Ambassador to Switzerland and in 1960 he became Ambassador to Denmark.