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.

The tomb of Ashley Clarke at San Michele Cemetery, Venice