Geoffrey Harrison

Geoffrey Harrison
Sir Geoffrey Wedgwood Harrison (18 July 1908 – 12 April 1990) was a British diplomat, who served as the United Kingdom's ambassador to Brazil, Iran and the Soviet Union. Harrison's tenure in Moscow was terminated in 1968, when he was recalled to London after his admission to the Foreign Office that he had an affair with his Russian maid, later revealed as a KGB "honey trap" operation.
Early life and education
Harrison was born in Southsea, Hampshire. His parents were Thomas Edmund Harrison, a Commander in the Royal Navy, a grandson of Josiah Wedgwood III and Maud Winifred Godman. He was educated at Winchester College in Hampshire and then at King's College, Cambridge. He joined the Foreign Office in 1932 and was posted to Japan and Germany before the outbreak of World War II. On 2 July 1935, he married Amy Katherine Clive (the daughter of Sir Robert Clive, the British Ambassador to Japan) at the embassy in Tokyo.
Diplomatic career
In October 1932, Harrison was appointed as a Third Secretary in His Majesty's Diplomatic Service, and in October 1937, he was promoted to Second Secretary. In July 1942, he was Acting First Secretary.
As a junior diplomat at the Foreign Office, Harrison drafted a memorandum, "The Future of Austria", which greatly contributed to the notion of Austria as an independent state. Harrison also contributed to the British draft declaration on Austria for the 1943 Moscow Declaration.
He was also the principal drafter of Article XII of the Potsdam Agreement, which concerned the expulsion of ethnic Germans from central and eastern Europe after World War II.
On 1 October 1956, Harrison was granted his first ambassadorship, as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Brazil. On 3 November 1958, he was transferred to Tehran as Ambassador to Iran/Persia. Between 1963 and 1965, Harrison was based in London as Deputy Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office.
On 27 August 1965, Harrison was appointed as Ambassador to the Soviet Union. In 1968, he engaged in a brief affair with a Russian chambermaid who was working at the British Embassy. Harrison recalled not asking or knowing if she worked for the KGB, but he said that it was assumed that every Soviet employee at the embassy worked or was an agent for the Soviet secret service. When security concerns arose over the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, and he had been sent incriminating photographs taken by the KGB, Harrison informed the Foreign Office of his indiscretion, which immediately terminated his appointment and recalled him to Britain. Harrison revealed the affair to The Sunday Times newspaper in 1981.
The journalist and author John Miller, who was part of the British press corps in the Soviet Union at the time of Harrison's ambassadorship, revealed more details of the affair in his memoir All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evenings: Miller named the maid with whom Harrison was involved as Galya Ivanov and said he was told that by a Russian contact that she was not only a KGB agent but also the sister of Eugene Ivanov, the Soviet naval attaché in Britain involved in the Profumo affair.
Honours
Harrison was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the New Year Honours of 1955.
In the 1968 Queen's Birthday Honours, he became a Knight Grand Cross of the Order (GCMG).
On 6 March 1961, Harrison was made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO).
References
External links
Wilson Visits Podgorny, 1968, British Pathé film of Sir Geoffrey Harrison with Prime Minister Harold Wilson, meeting Soviet head of state Nikolai Podgorny
1908 births
1990 deaths
Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Brazil
Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Iran
Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to the Soviet Union
Members of HM Diplomatic Service
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
Knights Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
People educated at Winchester College
20th-century British diplomats