When Churchill resigned and Eden became Prime Minister in April 1955, Rumbold remained for a few months as PPS to the new Foreign Secretary, Harold Macmillan, accompanying him to San Francisco in June 1955 for talks between the Foreign Ministers of the United States, Britain, France and Russia in preparation for the Geneva Summit in the following month.[6]
Rumbold left the Foreign Office for a time, then returned, and was an assistant Under-Secretary of State 1957–60, responsible for European and east–west relations. Again he accompanied the Foreign Secretary, now Selwyn Lloyd, in international talks including Eisenhower's visit to England in August 1959,[7] and was British representative on working groups preparing for the frequent top-level conferences at that time, including the 1960 Paris Summit which failed because of the U-2 incident just before the summit took place.
In June 1960 Rumbold was appointed Minister in Paris (under the ambassador, Sir Pierson Dixon); The Times suggested that he could have been appointed as ambassador in a smaller mission if he had not chosen to remain on the "inner circuit" of major capitals.[8] In 1965 he was appointed Ambassador to Thailand;[9] while he was there he was also UK representative on the Council of SEATO. In 1967 he received his final appointment as Ambassador to Austria.[10] He retired from the Diplomatic Service in 1970.
Honours
Anthony Rumbold was appointed CMG in the 1953 Coronation Honours when he was Counsellor at the Embassy in Paris[11] and CB in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1955 for his work as PPS to the Foreign Secretary.[12] He was knighted KCMG in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1962[13] and KCVO in 1969.[14] The Norwegian government made him Commander of the Order of St. Olav in 1955 and the Austrian government gave him the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit in 1969.
Personal life
Anthony Rumbold inherited the Rumbold baronetcy on the death of his father, Sir Horace Rumbold, 9th Baronet, in 1941 (thus becoming Sir Anthony long before he would have acquired the title through knighthood). In 1937 he married Felicity Ann Bailey (whose maternal grandfather was the 1st Earl of Inchcape) at St Margaret's, Westminster. They had three daughters and one son, who inherited the baronetcy as Sir Henry Rumbold, 11th Baronet.
Anthony Rumbold's best man at his wedding was his friend and fellow-diplomat Donald Maclean[15] who was much later revealed to be a Soviet spy, which led to suspicions that Rumbold might have been the so-called "Fifth Man" in the spy ring which included Maclean.[16]
^"Rumbold had enjoyed a life-long friendship with Donald Maclean. ... There was no new evidence against Rumbold, so the case was passed to MI5 and shelved." — Nigel West, The Friends: Britain's Post-War Secret Intelligence operations, quoted in The Times, London, 26 June 1992, page 2