Hannay was born in London and educated at
Craigflower Preparatory School,
Winchester College and
New College, Oxford. He entered the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1959, and was initially posted to positions in
Tehran and
Kabul. Starting in 1965 and continuing into the early 1970s, he was a representative of the British government in discussions which led to the
United Kingdom's entry into the
European Economic Community in 1973. He held various positions at the Foreign Office in London during the 1970s and 1980s. He was a
minister at the British Embassy in Washington, DC, in 1984–1985, and was then promoted to ambassador and permanent representative to the European Economic Community from 1985 to 1990. After that posting he spent the next five years as ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations. Hannay took on specialised roles such as United Nations Special Representative for
Cyprus between 1996 and 2003 and was a member of the UN High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, reporting to the
Secretary-General in December 2004. ==Honours and awards==