Mervyn Brown

Brown was educated at Murton, where his parents lived,[1] then Ryhope Grammar School and St John's College, Oxford. He served with the Royal Artillery 1942–45 and joined the Diplomatic Service in 1949. After serving at Buenos Aires and at the UK mission to the United Nations in New York, in 1960 he was appointed consul in Vientiane, Laos,[2] and deputy to the ambassador (John Addis). He later wrote a memoir of his experience of the Laotian Civil War, including a month spent as a prisoner of the Pathet Lao.

Brown was Ambassador to Madagascar 1967–70,[3] High Commissioner to Tanzania and concurrently Ambassador to Madagascar (this time non-resident) 1975–78,[4] and High Commissioner to Nigeria and concurrently Ambassador to Benin 1979–83.[5]

Brown was appointed OBE in the 1963 New Year Honours,[6] and CMG in the 1975 New Year Honours.[7] He was knighted KCMG in the 1981 New Year Honours.[8] He is an Officier of the Ordre National of Madagascar. He is a patron of the charity Money for Madagascar.[9]

• Madagascar Rediscovered: A History from Early Times to Independence, 1978. ISBN 0950628409
• A History of Madagascar, 1995. ISBN 1558762922
• War in Shangri-La: A Memoir of Civil War in Laos, 2001. ISBN 1860647359

• Interview with Sir Mervyn Brown & transcript, British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Churchill College, Cambridge, 1996
• Portraits of Sir Mervyn Brown (1923–), Diplomat at the National Portrait Gallery, London