Palairet was posted to
Rome in 1906,
Vienna in 1908,
Paris in 1913, and
Athens in 1917. In 1918 he was posted back to Paris for the
Peace Conference. After a brief time in the
Foreign Office in London, he returned to Paris in 1920 with the rank of First Secretary. In 1922 he was posted as Counsellor to
Tokyo where he and his family survived the
Great Kanto earthquake on 1 September 1923, which devastated Tokyo and destroyed the British embassy. He moved on to
Peking in 1925, returned to London in 1926, and returned to Rome again in 1928. As an experienced middle-rank diplomatist, Palairet then became
minister to Romania in December 1929. Here their charm and hospitality and keen interest in Romanian culture won the Palairets a wide circle of friends.
Prince Carol, who returned from exile and became king in 1930, showed no grudge at having been requested to leave England in 1928 because of his alleged involvement in a plot to place him on the Romanian throne. Good Anglo-Romanian relations, both political and commercial, were established, but German economic and political penetration had become menacing before Palairet left for
Stockholm in 1935. — Peter Neville in
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Palairet was
minister to Sweden 1935–37 before being posted to
Vienna as
minister to Austria in December 1937. This was a critical time for Austria. Palairet reported to the Foreign Office that
Hitler had 'raved like a madman' at Austrian Chancellor
Kurt Schuschnigg during their meeting at
Berchtesgaden on 12 February 1938. There was nothing that Britain could do: the
Anschluss followed on 11–12 March and Palairet was recalled to London. He was sent as the second UK delegate (with
Lord Winterton) to the
Évian Conference on Jewish refugees on 6–13 July. In September–December 1938 he was sent to take charge of the legation in
Bucharest because of the illness of his successor as minister there,
Sir Reginald Hoare. In June 1939 he was posted to Athens again as
minister to Greece. When the
German army approached Athens in April 1941 the British Embassy was evacuated, but Palairet remained accredited to the
Greek government in exile and accompanied them to
Crete and then, after the fall of Crete in May 1941, to
Cairo. His post was upgraded to
Ambassador in 1942 before he retired in April 1943. However, he returned to the Foreign Office as a temporary Assistant
Under-Secretary, dealing with matters concerning prisoners of war, until July 1948. Michael Palairet was appointed CMG in December 1923, after the
Tokyo earthquake, along with the British consuls at Kobe and Yokohama. He was knighted
KCMG in the
King's Birthday Honours of 1938, following his return from Vienna after the
Anschluss of Austria in March 1938. ==Private life==