Hugh Guion MacDonell

Sir Hugh Guion MacDonell GCMG CB PC (5 March 1831, Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany – 25 January 1904, London) was a British diplomat who was envoy to Brazil, Denmark and Portugal.

His eldest sister, married to the Alexandre Jean Aguado y Moreno, II Marqués de las Marismas del Guadalquivir, was Dame du Palais to the Empress Eugenie.

Another sister, Ida MacDonell, married Don Augusto Conte y Lerdo de Tejada, Spanish Diplomant and Minister Plenipoteniary at Copenhagen.

MacDonell attended Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade on 22 December 1848,[1] He served in British Kaffraria 1849–52, but retired from the army on account of ill-health in 1853 and joined the diplomatic service.

The outbreak of war between Great Britain and the two South African republics in October 1899 raised some very difficult and delicate questions between Britain and Portugal, whose port at Delagoa Bay was directly connected with the Transvaal by rail and was the principal, if not the only, channel for supplies and external communications when access through the British colonies had been closed.