He was married to Catherine Laylle, founder of the charity Parents & Abducted Children Together and life peer, and an active board member of the Transatlantic Forum for Education and Diplomacy.

Meyer was then sent from 1978 to 1982 to the UK permanent representation to the European Communities in Brussels, followed by two years as political counsellor in the British embassy in Moscow.

This led to a significant increase in public use of the PCC, with complaints about the press rising from 2,630 in 2002 to 4,698 by the time Meyer retired as chairman.

He was also responsible for developing the PCC's pre-publication activity, including its anti-harassment service, which proved highly effective in protecting people from the unwanted attention of media scrums.

[7] Meyer's tenure coincided with the gaoling in 2007 of the News of the World reporter, Clive Goodman, and the enquiry agent, Glenn Mulcaire, for phone hacking offences under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

It was attacked by members of the Labour government (Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott called Meyer a "red-socked fop"),[16] while a group of MPs urged him to "publish and be damned".

[17] Meyer gave a detailed rebuttal of his critics in written evidence submitted to the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration.

[20] In November 2013 Meyer published a third book, the Amazon Kindle single, Only Child, a personal memoir of his childhood interwoven with the story of how his father was shot down and killed in the Second World War.

[26] 2009 also saw him present a BBC television series Getting Our Way,[27] which chronicled episodes from British diplomatic history over the last 500 years and was later turned into a book.

[28] In 2012 he fronted a six-part international documentary series for Sky Atlantic called "Networks of Power", which examined the power-brokers of Mumbai, Rome, Moscow, New York, Los Angeles and London.

[29] He frequently appeared on news and current affairs programmes, for example, providing analysis for the BBC's coverage of President Barack Obama's state visit to Britain in May 2011.

A 15-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy were arrested on suspicion of assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, but were released under investigation while enquiries into the incident continued.