Sir John Leahy, KCMG (born 7 February 1928) is a former senior British diplomat. He later became Chairman of Lonrho. John has a wife (Anne) and 4 children: 2 girls and 2 boys. (Emma, Peter, Jamie, Alice) All of which, now, have fully grown up.
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Educated at Tonbridge School, Cambridge and Yale Universities.[1] After National Service in the R.A.F., Leahy joined the Foreign Office in 1952 at the age of 24.
In a series of diplomatic appointments, Leahy became assistant private secretary to Selwyn Lloyd, Minister of State, who later became Foreign Secretary during the Suez crisis. Leahy also served as Foreign Office spokesman and was later seconded for a time to the Northern Ireland Office as Under-Secretary of State.
Back at the Foreign Office, Leahy was appointed ambassador to South Africa and subsequently became the FCO's Deputy Under-Secretary of State (DUSS) for Africa and the Middle East. His last diplomatic appointment was as High Commissioner to Australia.
Regarded as having "a safe pair of hands", Leahy carried out a number of sensitive assignments on behalf of the British government, and came face to face with leading political figures of the day. For example, in April 1984, he was sent to Jamba in Angola to secure the release of 16 Britons who had been taken hostage by the Angolan rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi. At the time, Savimbi's UNITA guerrilla movement was financed and supported militarily by the apartheid regime in South Africa.The mission was successful and Leahy brought the captives back to London.Angola.[2]
After his retirement from HM Diplomatic Service, Leahy held several non-executive appointments, including being a director of the Observer newspaper, before joining Lonrho as a non-executive director in October 1993. He became Chairman in November 1994. On 2 March 1995, after many internal upheavals, the company board dismissed the controversial businessman (Tiny Rowland), one of the Joint Chief Executives.[3] In 1997 Leahy was succeeded by Sir John Craven.