Terence philip
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Ralph Wigram
“I admired always so much his courage, integrity of purpose, high comprehending vision” (Winston Churchill to Ava Wigram, 1937)
Dying tragically at the age of 46, Ralph Wigram was one of the Foreign Office’s most industrious workers. He succeeded Sir Orme Sargent as Head of the Central Department in 1936 and watched as Nazi Germany began to show her dominance in Europe. A crucial ally of Sir Robert Vansittart’s, Wigram’s death left a hole in running of the Foreign Office.
Having gained recognition in Paris (where he had been Head of Chancery from 1924), Wigram moved back to Whitehall at a crucial period in international relations. Hitler had come to power in Germany and was slowly working away at the Peace Treaties. He was an opponent to appeasement for appeasement’s sake, but believed that if something could be got from Hitler, a bargain might be worthwhile. Wigram did not believe in concessions for concessions sake. He believed – like Vansittart – that if a settlement could be made, then to make relevant concessions was legitimate.
Along with Sargent, Wigr
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March 12, 2015
Finest Hour 159, Summer 2013
Page 08
By Hugh Axton
“He was Swifter Than the Eagle. He was Braver than a Lion.”
About fifteen years ago I was staying near Cuckfield, Sussex, when I remembered a reference in Martin Gilbert’s official biography, Winston S. Churchill, that Ralph Wigram’s funeral took place there on 4 January 1937. Wigram was the foreign office informant who, at great personal risk, had kept Churchill informed in detail on German rearmament during the 1930s (FH 157: 24). I tracked the venue to Cuckfield’s Holy Trinity Church, which had probably been chosen by Ralph’s widow Ava: her father’s grave, with an almost identical marker, is only twenty yards away.
Arriving on a damp September day, I wondered how I could find Wigram’s grave in this inordinately vast village churchyard. But as I walked round the perimeter path, I came to a corner with a headstone in the form of a cross, and could just spot the words: Ralph Wigram CMG. The inscription was a little difficult to read, but this was clearly what I was looking for. I was sur
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The Englishman Who Foresaw the War
As Hitler’s shadow loomed over Europe from 1934 to 1938, there was a man in the British Foreign Office, Ralph Wigram, who was deeply versed in the German character and downright in his distrust of everything the Nazis stood for. This is how Wigram appeared to his perceptive junior, VALENTINE LAWFORD, whose memoirs,BOUND FOR DIPLOMACY,appear this month.
By Valentine Lawford
RALPH WIGRAM seemed a very gentle, almost shy person on my first morning in the Foreign Office, with his youthful looks and quiet voice and few words. An are of hair falling forward from the part and cutting across the line of the cheek seemed to make his face even slighter and younger. His nose had character all right; it was highbridged and not small. And though his face narrowed abruptly from the cheekbones down and came to a point at the chin, the chin itself was fine and firm, like the thin end of an almond. Still, it was the upper half of the head, from the crown to the eyes, that caught one’s attention. The hair was the color of bronze, thick and u
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