Ashley Clarke

Sir Henry Ashley Clarke GCMG GCVO FSA (26 June 1903 – 20 January 1994) was a British diplomat who was ambassador to Italy.

He was Minister at Lisbon 1944–46 and at Paris 1946–49 under the ambassadors Duff Cooper and Sir Oliver Harvey.

[3] In 1953, he received his last appointment as Ambassador to Italy[4] where he remained for nine years, an unusually long period.

Clarke retired from the Diplomatic Service in 1962 and devoted himself to numerous cultural and artistic activities.

[10] Her father was an American diplomat and her maternal grandfather was the British Brigadier General Sir Herbert Conyers Surtees.

[19] His ashes were taken to Venice and on 26 February were ceremonially carried in a sixteen-oar boat, through thick fog, the length of the Grand Canal and across the lagoon to the funerary island of San Michele, where they were buried in the Protestant cemetery.