Knox Helm

A keen volunteer when World War I broke out, he was allowed by the Foreign Office to join his field artillery unit, being promoted second lieutenant in 1917 and serving in that capacity in Palestine.

After a short period of training in Oriental languages at King's College, Cambridge, he went as Vice-Consul to Thessaloniki, and soon after became third Dragoman at Constantinople.

In 1937 he was sent as Consul to Addis Ababa, and at the outbreak of World War II was moved to the British Embassy at Washington, D.C., where he handled the various complicated problems connected with the supply of petroleum to the United Kingdom.

[1] In 1949 he was appointed the first British Chargé d'Affaires (later Minister) to Tel Aviv[2] in the newly independent State of Israel, where he spent two happy and fruitful years; in 1951 he became Ambassador to Turkey.

He retained to the end the accent and intonation of the Dumfriesshire farming stock from which he came and his love for and understanding of the things of the soil often stood him in good stead in posts where agricultural problems bulked large in the economy of the country.