John Peck (diplomat)
Sir John Howard Peck
Early life
Peck was born on 16 February 1913 in Kuala Lumpur in Malaya, now Malaysia. His parents were Howard Peck, a civil engineer, and Dorothea Peck. In 1915, the family returned to England and lived in Basingstoke, Hampshire, and later Northamptonshire. He attended Wellington College, where he was appointed head boy, and received his bachelor's degree from Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1935 on a scholarship.[7]
Career
Peck was the first British Ambassador to Ireland to have been recruited from the
Despite the strains in relations between the United Kingdom and Ireland in the wake of those events, Peck praised the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, of whom he said "all those concerned with, and committed to, peace with justice in the North owe a very great deal to his courage and tenacity", adding that "I do not think that I ever succeeded in convincing British politicians of how much we owed him at that stage, or what the consequences would have been if he had lost his head".[10]
He published his memoirs, Dublin from Downing Street, in 1978.[11]
References
- ISBN 978-0-19-954089-1.
- Irish Times, January 14, 1995
- ^ IRA Tactics and Targets, J. Bowyer Bell, Poolbeg, 1990, page 71
- ^ Obituary: Sir John Peck, The Independent, 20 January 1995
- ^ The Economist, Volume 267, Issue 3, 1978, page 134
- ^ Whitaker's Almanack, J. Whitaker & Sons, 1972, page 795
- ^ "Peck, Sir John Howard | Dictionary of Irish Biography". www.dib.ie. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
- ^ The excellent honour of ambassador suits you, sir, Sunday Independent, 16 July 2006
- ^ 1972: British embassy in Dublin destroyed, On This Day, 2 February 1972, BBC News Online
- ^ A New History of Ireland, Volume II: Medieval Ireland 1169-1534, Volume 2, Art Cosgrove, OUP Oxford, 2008, page 358
- ^ Dublin from Downing Street, Sir John Peck, Gill and Macmillan, 1978
External links
- Scene at British Embassy after it is burnt to ground, featuring interview with Sir John Peck, AP Archive, 3 February 1972