Sir Pierson Dixon and the Foreign Office Milieu, 1943-1968

Sir Pierson Dixon was a senior figure in the Foreign Office in the two decades following the Second World War. Dubbed "the subtlest mind in Whitehall" by Harold Macmillan, as Principal Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary 1943-1947 he was an eyewitness to the creation of a new international order and as Ambassador in Prague 1948-1950 he saw the Iron Curtain descend across the continent. He was Permanent Representative at the UN in New York in 1956 during the Suez Crisis and Ambassador to France from 1960 until 1965, where he headed the officials attempting to negotiate Britain’s entry into the EEC. On a basic level, Dixon’s centrality in the post-war Foreign Office ought to make him an ideal subject through whom this critical period can be studied. He is however something of a forgotten figure. This could be seen as a result of his close association with a series of British foreign policy failures: the inability to arrest the Soviet takeover of Central Europe or to stop the triumph of Nasserism in Egypt, and the humiliation of being blackballed from the European club. Equally his early death only weeks after finally taking leave of the Paris Embassy prevented him from becoming a sage voice in retirement. Many academics have also considered him to be one of a number of eminent but occasionally indistinguishable mandarins of the period; spoken of in the same breath, seemingly hatched from the same nest and prone to similar views. What makes Dixon exceptional is that he maintained a variety of scholarly and literary interests beyond his diplomatic duties whilst rising through the ranks to the very top of the service; and this wider intellectual life—his thinking on culture, history and strategy—profoundly interacted with his diplomatic philosophy and methods. Whilst common policy strands with colleagues at this critical point in British diplomatic history can be identified, Dixon’s thinking arguably gave greater genuine weight to the historical, cultural and civilisational context of certain positions and the impact of this can be seen in his policy prescriptions.

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