Richard Beaumont

Richard Beaumont   (diplomat)
Born	29 December 1912
Died	23 January 2009 (Age 96)
Nationality	UK
Alma mater	Repton School, Oriel College (Oxford), Imperial Defence College
British diplomat and Arabist who spent most his diplomatic career serving in the Arab world.  UK/Ambassador/Egypt  In office 1969 - 1973  UK/Ambassador/Iraq  In office 1965 - 1967  UK/Ambassador/Morocco In office 1961 - 1965

Sir Richard Ashton Beaumont was a British diplomat and Arabist who spent most his diplomatic career serving in the Arab world.

Educated at Repton School and Oriel College, Oxford, Beaumont joined the Consular Service in 1936, and was sent to Lebanon and Syria. In 1941 he joined the Army and served in Palestine. In 1944 he returned to the Foreign Office. He was a counsellor in the British Embassy in Baghdad, and was later sent to Venezuela, his only foreign post outside the Arab world.

In 1958 Beaumont attended the Imperial Defence College. He then returned to the Foreign Office as head of the Arabian department. He was appointed as ambassador to Morocco in 1961, and ambassador to Iraq in 1965. When the Six-Day War broke out in 1967, the Iraqi government broke off diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, and Beaumont had 48 hours to leave the country. He returned to London, where he was appointed deputy under-secretary of state. He was ambassador to Egypt from 1969 to 1973, and did much to strengthen Anglo-Egyptian relations. Following his retirement, he headed several organisations dealing with British-Arab relations, such as the Arab British Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) where he served as the Chairman from 1980 to 1996. He was a governor of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

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