David Everard Tatham was educated at
St Lawrence College, Ramsgate, and
Wadham College, Oxford. He joined the
Diplomatic Service in 1960 and served at
New York,
Milan and, after studying at the
Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, at
Jeddah,
Muscat and
Dublin as well as at the
FCO. He was
Ambassador to the
Yemen Arab Republic and
concurrently to the
Republic of Djibouti 1984–87; head of the
Falkland Islands department at the FCO 1987–90; Ambassador to the
Lebanese Republic 1990–92;
Governor of the Falkland Islands (and
commissioner for South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) 1992–96; and
High Commissioner to the
Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and concurrently to the
Republic of Maldives 1996–99. Tatham retired from the Diplomatic service on leaving Sri Lanka and was adviser on diplomatic training to the
Palestinian Authority in 2000. He was district manager for the
2001 United Kingdom census in the area of
Ledbury (where he lived) and
Ross-on-Wye, and then embarked on
The Dictionary of Falklands Biography, including South Georgia, which was published in 2008 (). He has been chairman of the
Falkland Islands Shackleton Scholarship Fund in the UK since 1999, and was chairman of the
Falkland Islands Association 2004–11. Tatham was among 52 senior British diplomats who in 2004 signed a letter to
Tony Blair, then British Prime Minister, criticising his Middle East policy. The letter was described as "unprecedented in scope and scale". ==Honours==