John Larkindale

Born in Wellington, Larkindale was educated at Wellington College. He then studied chemistry at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating BSc and then MSc(Hons). His 1968 master's thesis, supervised by Alan Freeman, was titled Some intercalation compounds of boron nitride. Larkindale was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship, and he went on to complete a PhD at McGill University in Canada in 1971. His doctoral thesis, supervised by David J. Simkin, was titled Spectroscopic and theoretical studies of charge-transfer complexes.

Larkindale joined the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1972, and had postings to New Zealand's embassies in Vienna and Washington. He then served as the director of Pacific aid, based in Wellington and, later, Tokelau official secretary. Subsequently, he was the deputy head of mission in Beijing and then London. In 1994 he was appointed executive director of the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) task force, responsible for organising the CHOGM summit held in Auckland the following year. Between 1996 and 1999, Larkindale was the New Zealand ambassador to the Russian Federation. Returning to Wellington, he was appointed deputy secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Larkindale's final diplomatic appointment was as high commissioner to Australia, in which role he served from 2006 until his retirement in 2011.

Larkindale became a member of the board of the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand (IPANZ) in 2012, and in March 2013 he was elected president of IPANZ.