William Montagu-Pollock

Sir William Montagu-Pollock KCMG (12 July 1903 – 26 September 1993) was a British diplomat who was ambassador to Syria, Peru, Switzerland and Denmark.

William Horace Montagu-Pollock was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He joined the Diplomatic Service in 1927 and served at Rome, Belgrade, Prague, Vienna and Stockholm (where he was chargé d'affaires during the Second World War) and then at the Foreign Office where he was the first Head of the Cultural Relations Department (CRD) for which role he was appointed CMG in the King's Birthday Honours of 1946. The CRD had its origins in a small Foreign Office section created to give political direction to the British Council and to manage the political and policy aspects of the growing scale of organised international intellectual, cultural, societal and artistic contacts, with a view to promoting Allied goodwill; but it became, almost by accident, a small British front-line unit in a clandestine struggle to prevent Moscow's domination of the world of international movements, federations and assemblies – what would later be called ‘the battle of the festivals’. Later, Montagu-Pollock was head of the General Department of the Foreign Office.

Montagu-Pollock was appointed Minister to Syria in 1950; the post was upgraded to Ambassador in 1952. He was appointed to be Ambassador to Peru in December 1953; while he was in Peru he was knighted KCMG in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1957. In May 1958 Sir William was appointed Ambassador to Switzerland and in 1960 he became Ambassador to Denmark.

Sir William retired from the Diplomatic Service in 1962. He was a member of the Board of Governors of the European Cultural Foundation, and was Chairman of the British Institute of Recorded Sound 1970–73. He was also Vice-President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music.