Gillian Brown (diplomat)


Dame Gillian Gerda Brown was a British diplomat who was the second woman to be a British ambassador.

Early life

She was the elder daughter of Walter Henry Brown, a Ministry of Works civil servant, and his wife, Gerda Lois Brown, née Grenside, an artist. Her sister was the mycologist, Juliet Frankland.

Career

Brown graduated in French and German from Somerville College, Oxford just as reforms instigated by Ernest Bevin and Anthony Eden in 1943 were liberalising recruitment policies at the Foreign Office – later the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, FCO – which she joined in 1944. After service at Budapest, Washington, D.C. and the OECD in Paris, she was head of the Marine and Transport Department at the FCO 1967–70 and had to deal with the international aspects of the Torrey Canyon oil spill in March 1967.
Brown was Ambassador to Norway 1981–83; she was the second female British ambassador after Anne Warburton. In 1983 she retired from the diplomatic service and served on Civil Service selection boards and on the council of the . From 1988 to 1998 she was chairman of the Anglo-Norse Society in London which now annually awards the Dame Gillian Brown Postgraduate Scholarship in her memory.

Honours

Brown was appointed CMG in 1971 and made a Dame of the Royal Victorian Order in 1981. The King of Norway awarded her the Grand Cross of the Order of St Olav. She was an honorary fellow of her alma mater, Somerville College, Oxford, and honorary LLD of the University of Bath.