William Hayter

Sir William Goodenough Hayter KCMG (1 August 1906 – 28 March 1995) was a British diplomat, Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1957, later Warden of New College, Oxford, and author.

Early life

Born at Oxford, Hayter was the son of Sir William Goodenough Hayter (1869–1924), a judge in Egypt and an adviser to the Egyptian government, and his wife, Alethea Slessor, daughter of a Hampshire clergyman, the Rev. John Henry Slessor, rector of Headbourne Worthy. His sisters, Priscilla Napier (1908–1998) and Alethea Hayter (1911–2006), both went on to become writers. Through his mother, he was a cousin of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor. He was then briefly in residence at Queen's before sitting the Foreign Office entrance examination in 1930. He came third, behind Frank Roberts (later British Ambassador in Moscow) but ahead of Duncan Sandys.

Career On 16 October 1930, Hayter was appointed a Third Secretary in the Diplomatic Service. His first year at the Foreign Office was spent in its League of Nations and Western Department. His next post was in Vienna, from October 1931, where he cultivated the city's high society. From April 1934 to January 1937 he was in Moscow, where Stalin was beginning his purges. He travelled widely in the Soviet Union, visiting Ukraine and Crimea. He went on a trip to the Caucasus with the German ambassador, Count Schulenberg, later executed for taking part in the 20 July plot to kill Hitler.

Moscow was followed by another year in the League of Nations department, and he made a visit to Spain during the Spanish Civil War. In October 1938 Hayter was sent out to the British embassy in China, then accredited to the government of Chiang Kai-shek at war with Japan. In December 1940 he was glad to be posted to Washington as First Secretary. Before long, his colleagues in China were interned by the Japanese. He arrived just before the attack on Pearl Harbor and had the task of reporting it to London. He was soon working closely with the State Department and the American military.

Hayter was charming and able, but few found real warmth in him. A different side was evident when Sir William was appointed Chairman of the Stanton St John of the SDP. He hosted events such as addresses by Dr David Owen, on at least two occasions, with great warmth and was held in great regard by his team including his Secretary Ben Beaumont. Lady Hayter played a full part in those activities. While still at school he had lost belief in Christianity, but he kept an affection for the Church of England. 1970–1975, and 1975–1980 Chair of the Trustees of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford.

Private life On 19 October 1938 Hayter married Iris Marie Grey (born 1911). Half English and half Swiss, she was the only child of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Hervey Grey, previously Hoare, and of his first wife, Marie Elizabeth, the widow of Sir Lepel Griffin and the daughter of Ludwig Leupold of Geneva.

They had one daughter, Teresa, born during their Shanghai posting in the Second World War.

He died on 28 March 1995, aged 88. Grand Decoration in Gold with Star for Services to the Republic of Austria (1967)

Publications Chiang, Yee, Silent Traveller in Paris, introduction by Sir William Hayter (W. W. Norton & Co., 1956) The Diplomacy of the Great Powers (New York: Macmillan, 1961; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961) The Kremlin and the Embassy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1966; New York: Macmillan, 1966) Russia and the World: A Study of Soviet Foreign Policy (London: Secker & Warburg, 1970, ; New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, Inc., ) William of Wykeham: patron of the arts (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970, ) A Double Life: the Memoirs of Sir William Hayter (London: Penguin Books, 1974)