Nevile Henderson
Sir Nevile Meyrick Henderson GCMG (10 June 1882 – 30 December 1942) was a British diplomat who served as the ambassador of the United Kingdom to Germany from 1937 to 1939.
Nevile Henderson
Sir Brian Robertson (1949)
George V (1935–36)
Edward VIII (1936)
George VI (1936–37)
George V
Sir Ronald Ian Campbell (1939)
30 December 1942 (aged 60)
London, England
Early life and education[edit]
Henderson was born at Sedgwick Park, near Horsham, Sussex, the third child of Robert Henderson and Emma Caroline Hargreaves.[1] His uncle was Reginald Hargreaves, who married Alice Liddell, the original of Alice in Wonderland.[2] Henderson was very attached to the countryside of Sussex, especially his home of Sedgwick, and wrote in 1940: "Each time that I returned to England the white cliffs of Dover meant Sedgwick for me, and when my mother died in 1931 and my home was sold by my elder brother's wife, something went out of my life which nothing can replace".[3] Henderson was extremely close to his mother, Emma, a strong-willed woman who had successfully managed the estate at Sedgwick after her husband's death in 1895 and developed the gardens of Sedgwick so well that they were photographed by Country Life magazine in 1901.[3] Henderson called his mother "the presiding genius of Sedgwick" who was a "wonderful and masterful woman if ever there was one".[3]
He was educated at Eton and joined the Diplomatic Service in 1905. He was, as one historian notes, "something of a snob", although another historian states that his snobbishness mostly derived from the death of his mother.[4]
Henderson had a great love of sports, guns, and hunting, and those who knew him noted he was always most happy when he was out on the hunt.[4] Henderson was also known for his love of clothing and always wore the most expensive Savile Row suits and a red carnation. He was considered to be one of the best-dressed men in the Foreign Office, being obsessed with the proper fashion even during long-distance rail voyages.[4] Henderson's obsession with his wardrobe, social etiquette, and hunting was part of a carefully cultivated image that he sought for himself as a polished Edwardian gentleman.[4]
Henderson never married, but his biographer, Peter Neville, wrote that "women played an important role in his life".[4] Henderson's lifelong bachelorhood did not cause questions about his sexuality; Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, the State Secretary of the Auswärtiges Amt, wrote in his diary that Henderson was a "ladies' man".[4]
Ambassador to Turkey[edit]
In the early 1920s, Henderson was stationed at the embassy in Turkey, where he played an important role in the often difficult relations between Britain and the new Turkish Republic.[5] Henderson had wanted a posting in France, rather than Turkey, where he constantly complained to his superiors about being sent.[5] During his time in Turkey, Henderson played a major role in the negotiations about the Mosul dispute, which had been caused by Turkish President Mustafa Kemal's claim to the Mosul region of Iraq. Henderson was forceful in upholding the British claim to the region.[5] but was prepared to yield to Turkish demands for Constantinople. He argued that Britain had been shown to have a very weak hand by the Chanak Crisis in 1922, which revealed that public opinion in Britain and its dominions was unwilling go to war over the issue.[5]
Ambassador to France and Yugoslavia[edit]
Henderson served as an envoy to France in 1928 to 1929 and as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between 1929 and 1935.[6] He did not want the latter post, whose British legation was considered to be an unglamorous post, compared to the "grand embassies" in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, Vienna, Madrid and Washington. He had been lobbying for a major post in the Paris embassy and, expecting to move back to Paris soon, continued to pay the rent for his apartment there for some time after moving to Belgrade.[7] During his time in Belgrade, Henderson became a very close friend of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, who shared his love of hunting and guns. In January 1929, having been a constitutional monarch, Alexander had staged a self-coup, abolished democracy and made himself the dictator of Yugoslavia. Following these events, Henderson's dispatches from Belgrade took on a notably pro-Yugoslav tone. His friendship with Alexander notably increased British influence in Yugoslavia, which first brought him attention in the Foreign Office.[8]
As would be the case during his time in Berlin, Henderson took exception to any negative remark in the British press about Yugoslavia and wrote to the Foreign Office to ask if anything could be done to silence such criticism.[7] After Alexander's assassination in Marseilles, France, in October 1934, Henderson wrote: "I felt more emotion at King Alexander's funeral than I felt at any other except my mother's".[7] Henderson wrote to a friend in Britain in 1935: "My sixth winter in the Belgrade trenches is the worst of all. The zest has gone out of it with King Alexander gone. It interested me enormously to play Stockmar to his Albert and that made all the difference".[7] Henderson was also in close confidence with Prince Paul, the regent of Yugoslavia on behalf of Alexander's son, Peter II, who was only a boy. In January 1935, the Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Robert "Van" Vansittart sharply rebuked him for a letter he had written to Paul in which Henderson strongly supported Yugoslavia's complaints against Italy.[9] Vansittart complained particularly about Henderson's claim that the Italian government supported Croat and Macedonian separatist terrorists and that Italy had been involved in Alexander's assassination: "Are we convinced of this and do we wish Prince Paul to think that we are convinced of it".[9]
Ambassador to Argentina[edit]
In 1935, Henderson became ambassador to Argentina.
Death[edit]
Henderson died on 30 December 1942 of cancer. He was then staying at the Dorchester Hotel, in London.[52] Informed by his doctors that he had around six months left to live, he wrote an anecdote-filled diplomatic memoir, Water Under the Bridges, which was posthumously published in 1945. Its final chapter defends his work in Berlin and the policy of "appeasement," praises Chamberlain for being "an honest and brave man" and argues on behalf of the Munich Agreement on the grounds that Britain was too weak militarily in 1938 to have stood up to Hitler. It also asserts that if Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia, the latter would have fallen within a few months.[2]
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