Gladwyn Jebb

Gladwyn Jebb, the first Baron Gladwyn, was a British civil servant, diplomat and Liberal politician. He entered the Diplomatic Service in 1924, served in Tehran and Rome, and during the Second World War was chief executive officer of the Special Operations Executive from 1940 to 1942. After the war he was executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations and then acting Secretary-General of the organisation from October 1945 to February 1946, until Trygve Lie was appointed; he remains the only head or acting head of the United Nations to come from a permanent member of the Security Council. He was Britain first permanent representative to the United Nations from 1950 to 1954 and ambassador in Paris from 1954 to 1960. Made a hereditary peer in 1960, he led the Liberals in the House of Lords as deputy leader and sat in the European Parliament from 1973 to 1976. He died in 1996.