Early Career in Foreign Office and SOE
Gilchrist was born on 19 April 1910 in the village of Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, before reading History at Exeter College, Oxford from where he graduated in 1931. After Oxford he entered the diplomatic service and had his first overseas posting in Siam, now Thailand.
During the war he spent time in a Japanese PoW camp, before being released in a prisoner exchange. He then joined SOE (Special Operations Executive) and was active in intelligence in India and Siam between 1944 and 1945. In his retirement he wrote a scholarly account of Britain's disastrous war in the east. Winston Churchill himself was singled out for criticism, for failing to protect British assets and placing too much reliance on the support of the US Pacific fleet.
After the war, in 1946 he married Freda Grace Slack and they raised three children; Janet (1947), Christopher (1948) and Jeremy (1951). He continued his career with postings to Iceland and Germany. In 1956 he was appointed British Ambassador to Reykjavik, Iceland. His time there included the First Cod War between the two countries. Anecdotes suggest that while the countries were threatening battle, he went fishing with an Icelandic minister. He later wrote a book about his time in Reykjavik entitled 'Cod Wars and How to Lose Them'.
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