Daphne Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth
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Daphne Margaret Sybil Désirée Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth CMG, OBE, FRSA (born 1 September 1921) is a former British diplomat. During her career she was also a clandestine senior controller in MI6 in Hanoi, Moscow, the Congo, and Zambia.
The daughter of John Alexander and Doreen Gwynneth Park, she was educated at Rosa Bassett School in Streatham and at Somerville College, Oxford, where she graduated with a B.A. in modern languages in 1943. She was further educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she received a Certificate of Competent Knowledge in Russian in 1952. Park served in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry from 1943 to 1948 and in the Allied Commission for Austria from 1946 to 1948.
In 1948, she entered the Foreign Office, becoming Third Secretary of the United Kingdom's delegation to NATO in 1952. From 1954 to 1956, she was Second Secretary of the British Embassy of Moscow, from 1959 to 1961, Consul and First Secretary to Leopoldville, from 1964 to 1967 High Commissioner to Lusaka and from 1969 to 1970 Consul-General to Hanoi. Between the periods of office abroad, she was ordered back to work in the Foreign Office. Park was Honourable Research Fellow at the University of Kent between 1971 until 1972, when she was made Chargé d'Affaires of the British Embassy of Ulan Bator for few months. From 1973 to 1979, she was in the Foreign Office once more, from 1980 to 1989 Principal of Somerville College, from 1982 to 1987 Governor of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and from 1983 to 1989 member of the British Library Board. Park was also chairman of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Aid between 1984 to 1990, and of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England between 1989 to 1994.
Park is a member of the Royal Asiatic Society and a governor of the Ditchley Foundation. She was a member of the Forum UK from 1994 to 1996, and is president of the Society for the Promotion of the Training of Women since 1994. In 2003, she was Patron of Action Congo. Between 1989 and 1990, she was director of the Zoo Development Trust, between 1991 and 1992 trustee of the Royal Armouries Development Trust and between 1985 and 1989 Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Park was trustee of the Great Britain-Sasakawa Foundation from 1994 until 2001, when she became its patron. She is also a trustee of the Jardine Educational Trust and of the Lucy Faithfull Travel Scholarship Fund.
In 1960, Park was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and in 1971 a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG). On 27 February 1990, she was created a life peer Baroness Park of Monmouth, of Broadway in the County of Hereford and Worcester. She is an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College and a Fellow of Chatham House (RIIA) and of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). RSA
Park is unmarried and childless.
