Humphrey Trevelyan, Baron Trevelyan

1967 photograph, by Godfrey Argent.

Humphrey Trevelyan, Baron Trevelyan, KG, GCMG, CIE, OBE (27 November 1905 – 9 February 1985) was a British diplomat and author.

Trevelyan was a son of Reverend George Trevelyan, grandson of the Venerable George Trevelyan, Archdeacon of Taunton, third son of Sir John Trevelyan, 4th Baronet. He was educated at Lancing and Jesus College, Cambridge. After Cambridge Trevelyan joined the Indian Civil Service. He served in India until independence in 1947, then transferred to HM Diplomatic Service. He held many key diplomatic posts, including charge in Beijing after the Revolution, ambassador to Egypt at the time of Suez, a development with which he was clearly uncomfortable, ambassador to Iraq at the time of the 1961 Kuwait crisis, Iraq's first attempt to annex Kuwait, and ambassador to the Soviet Union. He completed forty years of public service as the last high commissioner of Aden, where he wound up British rule and oversaw the British withdrawal from what had been the Aden Protectorate and became South Yemen.

Trevelyan wrote a number of books about his career, including The India We Left and The Middle East in Revolution.

In 1968, he was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer with the title Baron Trevelyan, of Saint Veep in the County of Cornwall.

Diplomatic posts
Unknown British Chargé d'affaires ad interim to the People's Republic of China
1953–1955
Unknown
Preceded by
Sir Ralph Stevenson
British Ambassador to Egypt
1955–1956
Suspended
Title next held by
Colin Crowe
as Chargé d'affaires
Unknown British Ambassador to Iraq
1958–1961
Succeeded by
Sir Roger Allen
Preceded by
Sir Frank Roberts
British Ambassador to the Soviet Union
1962–1965
Succeeded by
Sir Geoffrey Harrison
Preceded by
Sir Richard Gordon Turnbull
High Commissioner of Aden
1967
Post abolished

See also