Reginald Hibbert was educated at
Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet, and
Worcester College, Oxford, where he took a war-shortened course in modern history. After graduating in 1942 he volunteered for the army and was commissioned into the
4th Hussars (a tank regiment). In 1943 he was seconded to the
Special Operations Executive and was parachuted into Albania, where he served as a liaison officer first with the nationalists, and then with the communist partisans. In 1944 he rejoined his regiment in Italy, serving as a troop commander until
demobilisation. After a further year at Oxford learning Russian he entered the
Foreign Service in 1946. In that year, before embarking on a more normal career, he had what he subsequently called a 'highly astonishing pupillage' as a note-taker and occasional interpreter in Russian for
Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary, in Moscow, Paris, and New York. Hibbert served in
Bucharest, Vienna,
Guatemala,
Ankara and
Brussels before volunteering for the post of
Chargé d'Affaires in
Ulan Bator, Mongolia, 1964–66. He then took a sabbatical research fellowship at
Leeds University before being appointed in 1967 to the office of the
Commissioner-General in South-East Asia in Singapore, first as head of chancery and then as political adviser to the
Commander-in-Chief, Far East. He was
Minister at
Bonn 1972–75; Assistant
Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office 1975–76; Deputy Under-Secretary of State 1976–79; and finally
Ambassador to France 1979–82. While Ambassador to France, he was known to be abrasive but his honesty was respected. After retiring from the Diplomatic Service, Hibbert was Director of the
Ditchley Foundation 1982–87. He was a Visiting Fellow of
Nuffield College, Oxford, 1984–88, and Senior Associate Member,
St Antony's College, Oxford, 1983–88. He was Chairman of the Franco-British Society 1990–95; President of the Féderation Britannique des Alliances Françaises, 1997–99; President of the Albanian Society of Britain, 1996–2000. Hibbert was appointed CMG in 1966 and knighted KCMG in 1979 and GCMG in 1982. He was appointed Commandeur in the
Légion d'Honneur in 1995. He was made an Honorary Resident Fellow of
University College of Swansea in 1988 and an Honorary Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford, in 1991. ==Publications==