Denis Wright

Sir Denis Arthur Hepworth Wright, GCMG (23 March 1911 – 18 May 2005) was a British diplomat. A long-serving ambassador to Iran, Wright's expertise and knowledge of Iran and Persian culture led him to write and edit several books on the region, as well as conduct a covert mission to inform the deposed Shah of Iran that he would not be granted asylum in Britain.

Early life and education Wright was born in 1911 in Kingston upon Thames (then in the county of Surrey), at the house of his father's parents. His father, Arthur Edgar Wright, was assistant director of public works in Hong Kong, where Wright spent his childhood attending the Peak School. In 1921, he returned with his family to England, where he attended Brentwood School in Essex.

From 1930 to 1932, Wright studied at the University of Oxford, reading modern history at St Edmund Hall, in which he graduated with a second-class degree. At the Oxford University Labour Club, Wright met Iona Craig, and they became engaged in 1938. His fiancée Iona joined him in Romania, and they were married at the consulate that year. In 1940, Wright was posted to the British embassy in Bucharest, then left Romania in 1941 when the country joined the Axis Powers and ended relations with Britain. Wright was then transferred to Turkey, where he served as vice-consul in Trabzon, earning a commendation from the embassy in Ankara, and in 1943, he was appointed acting consul in the port city of Mersin.

In May 1979, Wright was asked by Sir Anthony Parsons of the Foreign Office to carry out a covert mission due to his close relationship with the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had just been deposed in the Iranian Revolution. The new British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was concerned that she had given the Shah the impression (whilst Leader of the Opposition) that he would be granted asylum in the UK—unable to convince her Cabinet and the Foreign Office to grant such a request, Thatcher wished to inform the Shah of the news via a trusted emissary (Wright). However, in his memoir Constantinople and Istanbul: 72 Years of Life in Turkey, Wright's former colleague in Ankara, Sidney Nowill, asserted that these stories were "contradictory and unbelievable"—that the Shah was imprisoned in Tehran at the time (although the false identity part was true, as Wright was concerned about possible ramifications due to his directorship of the Shell Oil Company)—and were probably concocted for the press by the D-Notice Committee, although the BBC reported in 2009 that the release of official documents from The National Archives confirmed Wright's meeting with the Shah in the Bahamas.

Wright died from prostate cancer at his home in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire on 18 May 2005.