Frank Brenchley was educated at
Sir William Turner's School, Coatham, North Yorkshire, and
Merton College, Oxford. He served with the
Royal Corps of Signals 1939–46 as an intelligence officer in the Middle East. He was assistant
military attaché at
Ankara 1943–45 while the spy
Cicero was operating, and was Director, Telecommunications Liaison, Syria and Lebanon, 1945–46. After leaving the army he spent two years as a civil servant at
GCHQ before transferring to the
Foreign Office in 1949. He served in
Singapore,
Cairo,
MECAS,
Khartoum and
Jeddah before returning to London as Head of the Arabian Department of the Foreign Office 1963–67 and then Assistant
Under-Secretary of State, Foreign Office, 1967–68. Brenchley was
Ambassador to Norway 1968–72,
Ambassador to Poland 1972–74 and finally Deputy
Secretary,
Cabinet Office, 1975–76. He retired from the Diplomatic Service and became Deputy Secretary-General and then Chief Executive of the
Arab-British Chamber of Commerce 1976–83. He was chairman of the Institute for Study of Conflict 1983–89, chairman of the Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism 1989–94, and also president of the International Institute for the Study of Conflict in Geneva 1989–91. In 1986 he presented his collection of first editions and papers by and about
T. S. Eliot to
Merton College Library and also presented a bust of Eliot by
Jacob Epstein ==Publications==