Curtis Keeble

Who was Curtis Keeble?

Sir Herbert Ben Curtis Keeble GCMG was a British diplomat and Ambassador to the Soviet Union between 1978 and 1982.

He was born in Chingford in 1922 and attended Clacton County High School before being accepted into Queen Mary, University of London, where he studied Modern Languages. His studies were interrupted by World War II, and he volunteered in 1941, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Irish Fusiliers on 20 February 1943. He worked as an interpreter on various convoys, including one marked H9 carrying 2000 Russian refugees to Odessa despite the fact that, at the time, he did not speak fluent Russian. It was later revealed that he should have been sent on a course to learn the language beforehand but never was due to a bureaucratic error, and as a result the men were "quite unmanageable" until the convoy reached Naples and a Red Army officer boarded.

Experiences with convoys during the war inspired Keeble to apply to join Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service, and he was accepted in 1947, and posted to Jakarta as acting vice-consul despite the normal requirement for applicants to have a university degree. His main task while serving there was to decipher coded messages arriving from the British ambassador at The Hague, something the staff did with only pencils and cipher books. In 1949 he returned to London, and on 2 March 1949 he formally relinquished his army commission, receiving the honorary rank of captain. In 1951 he was sent to the Berlin British Sector as deputy political advisor. In 1954 he was transferred yet again, this time to Washington to serve in the commercial department and again in 1958 back to London. In 1961 he was appointed head of the department negotiating the entry of Britain into the European Economic Community, something that failed due to clashes with the French. He was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 1970 New Year Honours, at the time he was serving at the British High Commission in Australia.