Gladwyn Jebb

The son of Sydney Jebb, of Firbeck Hall, Yorkshire, Jebb was educated at Sandroyd School, Eton College, then Magdalen College, Oxford, gaining a First in History. In 1929 he married Cynthia Noble, daughter of Sir Saxton Noble, 3rd Baronet. Noble was granddaughter of Sir Andrew Noble, 1st Baronet and the great-granddaughter of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The couple had three children, one son and two daughters: Miles, Vanessa, married to the historian Hugh Thomas, and Stella, married to the scientist Joel de Rosnay. Jebb's granddaughter is the international best selling author Tatiana de Rosnay.

Jebb entered the British Diplomatic Service in 1924, served in Tehran, where he became known to Harold Nicolson and to Vita Sackville-West. He later served in Rome, as well as at the Foreign Office in London where he served in such positions as Private Secretary to the Head of the Diplomatic Service.

In August 1940, Jebb was appointed to the Ministry of Economic Warfare with temporary rank of Assistant Under-Secretary. Later, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Special Operations Executive. In February 1942, with a change of Minister of Economic Warfare, Jebb was relieved of this appointment and returned to the Foreign Office. He was appointed Head of the Reconstruction Department and in 1943 was made a Counsellor. In this capacity he attended numerous international conferences, including those at Tehran, Yalta, Dumbarton Oaks, and Potsdam.

After World War II, Jebb served as Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations in August 1945, being appointed Acting United Nations Secretary-General from October 1945 to February 1946, until the appointment of the first Secretary-General Trygve Lie. Jebb remains the only UN Secretary-General or Acting Secretary-General to come from a permanent member state of the United Nations Security Council.

Returning to London, Jebb served as Deputy to the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin at the Conference of Foreign Ministers before serving as the Foreign Office's United Nations Adviser (1946–1947). He represented the United Kingdom at the Brussels Treaty Permanent Commission with personal rank of ambassador.

Jebb became the United Kingdom's Ambassador to the United Nations from 1950 to 1954 and to Paris from 1954 to 1960. He was the UK's first permanent UN representative.[1] In the latter role, he was angered that secret negotiations between the British, French and Israelis in advance of the Suez invasion in 1956 took place at Sèvres without his knowledge and, in certain respects, that he was sidelined by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan at the Paris "big power" summit in 1960.[2]

Jebb's rather "grand" manner caused Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd to coin an epigram: "You're a deb, Sir Gladwyn Jebb".[3]

Jebb was knighted in 1949. On 12 April 1960 Jebb was created a hereditary peer and as Baron Gladwyn, of Bramfield in the County of Suffolk.[4] London Gazette He became involved in politics as a member of the Liberal Party. He was Deputy Leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords from 1965 to 1988 and spokesman on foreign affairs and defence. An ardent European, he served as a Member of the European Parliament from 1973 to 1976, where he was also the Vice-President of the Parliament's Political Committee. Jebb unsuccessfully contested the Suffolk seat in the European Parliament in 1979.

When asked in the early 1960s why he had joined the Liberal Party, he replied that the Liberals were a party without a general and that he was a general without a party. Like many Liberals, he passionately believed that education was the key to social reform.

Jebb died on 24 October 1996 at the age of 96, and is buried at St Andrew's Church, Bramfield in Suffolk.

• GCMG, 1954 (preceded by a KCMG in 1949 and a CMG in 1942)
• GCVO, 1957
• Companion of the Bath, 1947
• Grand Croix de la Légion d'Honneur, 1957

Publications by Jebb include:

• Is Tension Necessary?, 1959
• Peaceful Coexistence, 1962
• The European Idea, 1966
• Half-way to 1984, 1967
• De Gaulle's Europe, or, Why the General says No, 1969
• Europe after de Gaulle, 1970
• The Memoirs of Lord Gladwyn, 1972

The papers of 1st Lord Gladwyn were deposited at Churchill Archives Centre at the University of Cambridge by his son, 2nd Lord Gladwyn, between 1998 and 2000.

• Sean Greenwood, Titan at the Foreign Office: Gladwyn Jebb and the Shaping of the Modern World (Leiden, Brill, 2008) (History of International Relations, Diplomacy, and Intelligence, 5).

Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Sir Oliver Harvey	British Ambassador to France 1954–1960	Succeeded by Sir Pierson Dixon
Positions in intergovernmental organisations
Preceded by Seán Lester as Secretary General of the League of Nations	Acting Secretary-General of the United Nations October 1945 – February 1946	Succeeded by Trygve Lie
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by New Creation	Baron Gladwyn 1960–1996	Succeeded by Miles Gladwyn Jebb, 2nd Baron Gladwyn

• Cambridge Archives Centre – Gladwyn Papers
• A film clip "Longines Chronoscope with Sir Gladwyn Jebb" is available at the Internet Archive