Andrew Gilchrist

Sir Andrew Graham Gilchrist KCMG (1910–1993) was an SOE operative and later a UK ambassador.

Early career in Foreign Office and SOE

Gilchrist was born in 1910 in a village called Hazelbank, Lanarkshire, Scotland. He attended Edinburgh Academy before going to Oxford University (1928-31) where he read history. After Oxford he entered the diplomatic service and had his first overseas posting in Siam, now Thailand.

During the war he spent time in a Japanese PoW camp, before being released in a prisoner exchange. He then joined SOE (Special Operations Executive) and was active in intelligence in India and Siam between 1944 and 1945. In his retirement he wrote a scholarly account of Britain's disastrous war in the east. Churchill himself was singled out for criticism, for failing to protect British assets and placing too much reliance on the support of the US Pacific fleet.

After the war, marriage to Freda Grace Slack (1946), fathering three children (Janet 1947, Christopher 1948 and Jeremy 1951) and postings to Iceland and Germany, he was appointed British Ambassador to Reykjavik, Iceland. His time there (1956-1959) included the First Cod War between the two countries. Anecdotes suggest that while the countries were threatening battle, he went fishing with an Icelandic minister. He wrote a book about his time in Reykjavik - Cod Wars and How to Lose Them - which was translated into Icelandic.

Ambassador to Indonesia and then Ireland

His next posting was to Chicago as Consul General, and then as Ambassador to Djakarta, Indonesia (1962-1966). His time there saw an attack on the British embassy, and the torching of his official Rolls Royce. Legend has it that he ordered a member of his staff, and fellow Scot, to parade in front of the rioters playing the bagpipes, and that this pacified the unruly mob. This story is almost certainly apocryphal. Either way, the embassy was destroyed two days later.

Britain was at the time strongly in favour of finding almost any means to help Indonesian opponents of Sukarno's communist-backed regime, helpful local propaganda certainly being one of them. Gilchrist reported to London that he had always believed that "more than a little shooting" would be necessary to bring about a change of regime. This turned out to be true as the US-backed regime lead by Suharto took power by force of arms in 1965 and Indonesia endured a civil war in the months that followed.

Gilchrist received a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1956, and was knighted via Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1964.

Sir Andrew Gilchrist was sent, for his final posting before retirement, to Dublin as ambassador. A quiet time there was made impossible by the resurgence of "the troubles" and British troops being sent on to the streets of Northern Ireland in 1969. He claimed to have made a bet with the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that the troops would be there for 25 years. Sadly this proved to be true, though Gilchrist himself died just before this anniversary in 1993.

Retirement and later life

After retiring from the Foreign Office in 1970, Gilchrist became the Chairman of the Highlands and Islands Development Board, a UK government quango which funded small start-up enterprises in what was a relatively poor region of the country.

In his retirement Gilchrist spent time curling, fishing and writing - in addition to his serious books on his time in Iceland, SOE's work in Siam and the fall of Malaya, he wrote a number of novels, including "Did Van Gogh Paint His Bed?" and some poetry. He was also a prodigious writer of letters to newspapers - principally the Times, the Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald. After his wife Freda died in 1987, he had a letter published in a British newspaper once a week on average until his death in 1993.

Personal life

On his return to Hazel Bank in Lanarkshire he introduced Victoria Plums to the area with varying success. The trees he planted are still there today and produce great quantities of plums enjoyed by the close friends and family of the Gilchrist's.