Obituary: Dame Gillian Brown

GILLIAN BROWN had had an exceptionally solid grounding when she was appointed as Ambassador to Norway in 1981.

She was fortunate in coming from a family of cultivated and European tastes (a maternal grandmother was Danish), and graduating from Somerville College, Oxford, in French and German just when the Eden-Bevin reforms were widening openings in the Foreign Service.

Joining the Research Department in 1944, she graduated to the main career branch and gained broad experience with postings in Budapest, Washington, OECD and Berne, which included a by-no-means general balance of political and economic work. This was matched by a variety of home postings, including a secondment to the Department of Energy at the height of the North Sea oil boom, which further strengthened her knowledge of the Whitehall machine.

To petroleum and maritime affairs (as head of the FCO Marine and Transport Department from 1967 to 1970 she had to deal with the international aspects of the Torrey Canyon oil spill), she soon added mastery of the security and defence issues, which were the other main component of the British- Norwegian relationship. She also interested herself in the large number of British troops undergoing winter warfare training in north Norway (one of her rare boasts was that she had dug, and temporarily occupied, an Arctic snow hole).

Early in her mission she took part in the Queen's state visit to Oslo, at which she was appointed DCVO and when she forged a relationship with officials of the Norwegian royal household which gave her lasting pleasure.

Gill Brown was happy in Oslo: in command of her subject; in a much-envied residence; and in a country where her achievements as a professional woman were much respected. She reaped her reward when the Falklands crisis broke, and Norway became one of the first countries to ban Argentine imports (the argument that territorial disputes must not be settled by force went straight home in the only Nato country to share a land frontier with the Soviet Union).

She was also held in high regard by her staff, in whose personal and professional affairs, and occasional problems, she took a practical and sympathetic interest. Always dignified in manner, but with a blessed absence of self-importance, she chuckled heartily when gently guyed at the embassy Christmas cabaret by an officer enveloped in the enormous fur coat which was Brown's winter trademark.

In retirement she was a chairman of Civil Service selection boards. She had a strong sense of public duty and standards and was dismayed by the decision to turn the CSSB into an agency, like others giving evidence (in vain) to a House of Lords committee but increasingly her interests centred on the Anglo-Norse Society of which she was chairman for a record 10 years, and its initiatives to support cultural and educational links between Britain and Norway. She was meticulous in turning out in all weathers to welcome speakers to its London meetings.

Gill Brown's fundamental quality was loyalty: to the diplomatic service and her colleagues; to Somerville College, of which she was an Honorary Fellow; to the causes she held dear; and to her family. She had a quiet but enduring Christian faith and was a strong supporter of the Anglican chaplaincy in Norway. In recent months she had spent much time helping a widowed sister with the problems of settling a complicated agricultural estate, and it was at her home in Cumbria that, quite suddenly, she died.

John Robson

Gillian Gerda Brown, diplomat: born Wimbledon, Surrey 10 August 1923; Second Secretary, Budapest 1952-54; First Secretary, Washington 1959-62; First Secretary, UK Delegation to OECD, Paris 1962-65; Head of Aviation, Marine and Transport Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office 1967- 70; Counsellor, Berne 1970-74; CMG 1971; Under Secretary, Department of Energy 1975-78; Assistant Under-Secretary of State, FCO 1978-80; ambassador to Norway 1981-83; DCVO 1981; died Ravenstonedale, Cumbria 21 April 1999.