Ivone Kirkpatrick

Sir Ivone Augustine Kirkpatrick, (3 February 1897 – 25 May 1964) was a British diplomat who served as the British High Commissioner in Germany after World War II, and as the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the highest-ranking civil servant in the Foreign Office. Early life and family Kirkpatrick was born on 3 February 1897 in Wellington, India, the elder son of Colonel Ivone Kirkpatrick (1860–1936) of the South Staffordshire Regiment, and his wife, Mary Hardinge (d. 1931), daughter of General Sir Arthur Edward Hardinge, later Commander-in-Chief, Bombay Army, and Governor of Gibraltar. His father was a descendant of a Scottish family that settled in Ireland during the eighteenth century. His mother was former Maid of Honour to Queen Victoria, and her grandfather Henry Hardinge, 1st Viscount Hardinge, served in the cabinets of Wellington and Peel, and was later governor-general of India in 1844–1848. Her first cousin Charles Hardinge, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penshurst was Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office in 1906–1910 and 1916–1920, and Viceroy of India in 1910–1916.