[1][2] During the First World War he served in the artillery and, since he spoke four languages fluently, as an intelligence officer in France, Italy, North Africa, Egypt, Libya, Palestine and Syria.

He wrote of Lawrence:[3] There are few people in this wide world I have greater admiration for... and I like him very well besides...Rodd entered HM Diplomatic Service in 1919.

[1] He was able to help his friend in 1919 when the latter was seriously injured in an air accident after the Handley Page Type O Bi-plane bomber he was traveling in crashed at Roma-Centrocelle airport.

[4] Having served as a diplomat in Rome, Rodd was able to arrange for Lawrence to recover at his father's residence in the British Embassy there.

[8][9] A second journey in 1927, with his brother Peter, and the future Arctic explorer Augustine Courtauld resulted in his being awarded the Society's Cuthbert Peake Grant and Founders' Medal in 1929.

In November 1934, Montague then asked Rodd to offer his friend, Colonel Lawrence, the appointment of Secretary to the bank.

Please explain how by accident it only came to me tonight, when I got back from work, too late to catch the evening mail from this pretty seaboard town.

These newspaper praises lead a fellow to write himself down as a proper fraud - and then along comes a real man to stake himself on the contrary opinion.

This organisation is less a secret society than an attitude of mind which no Italian Government has yet succeeded in stamping out completely, though Mussolini made a strenuous effort to do so when he sent Mori as Prefect to Palermo in the 1925-30 period...

I say deliberately "may", because with the Omertà, or Sicilian code of honour, which precludes recourse of the injured parties even in cases of murder to the Government, it has been notoriously difficult to secure evidence of guilt, or even willingness to make charges...[5]In another report Rodd noted the growth of a number of violent Communist groups: Instances in point are the riots that took place at Irsina... and at a village in Matera Province.

There have been one or two other cases in areas further North where similar incidents might have taken place but for the intervention of my officers arriving with the troops and calming the crowd...[5]While in Italy he pursued the Allies' goal of protecting physical symbols of the country; i.e. works of art, buildings, libraries and monuments.

[13] On the death of his father on 26 July 1941 he gained the title of 2nd Baron Rennell and become active as a Liberal peer, crossing to the Conservative benches in the early 1950s.