Sir Christopher Meyer, KCMG

Sir Christopher Meyer was 37 years in the British Diplomatic Service. His career culminated as Ambassador to the United States during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies between 1997 and 2003. His five and a half years in Washington, which made him the longest-serving British Ambassador to the USA since the Second World War, coincided with 9/11, the wars in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, and the preparation for war in Iraq.

Previously he had been Ambassador to Germany and had postings to the former Soviet Union (twice), Spain and the European Union in Brussels. He was also Press Secretary to Prime Minister Sir John Major, Press Secretary to Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey, now Lord, Howe, and speech writer to three Foreign Secretaries, the late James Callaghan, the late Anthony Crosland and Lord (David) Owen.

Sir Christopher was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen in 1998.

After his retirement from the Diplomatic Service in 2003, Sir Christopher chaired the Press Complaints Commission for six years until March 2009.

Sir Christopher is now a regular television, radio and newspaper commentator on international affairs and the media.  In 2005 he published DC Confidential, a memoir of his time in the Diplomatic Service. A further book, Getting Our Way: 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue: the Inside Story of British Diplomacy, was published in 2009 and accompanied a three-part TV series for BBC4. In 2012 he presented and co-wrote a six-part TV documentary series for Sky Atlantic, Networks of Power.  Sir Christopher has also made several documentaries for BBC Radio with diplomatic and press themes.

In 2013 he published as an Amazon Kindle Single a personal memoir, Only Child.

Sir Christopher is an Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge University, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. In 2010 was a visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and in 1988 a visiting Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

He is a non-executive director of the Arbuthnot Banking Group and is Chairman of the Advisory Board of Pagefield, a public relations company. He is on the Advisory Board of British-American Business inc. He is a Freeman of the City of London and member of the Worshipful Company of Stationers.

Sir Christopher is an alumnus of Lancing College and Peterhouse, Cambridge University, in England, the Lycée Henri IV in Paris and the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy.

Sir Christopher is married to Lady Catherine Meyer CBE, founder of the children’s charity, Action Against Abduction.. They have four sons between them.