Stratton was born on 16 July 1924 in London, and was educated at the King's School, Rochester, in Kent.
[1] It was followed by work in Seoul, South Korea; the NATO Defence College in Paris, France; Bonn, Germany; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
[2] Stratton served as head of the political department for the United Nations in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1971 to 1972.
[2] He was named the British Ambassador to Zaire and the Congo in 1974, where his fluent French proved advantageous.
[1] His obituary in The Times called him "gregarious and a great traveller ... a diplomat of the old school who knew how to cultivate the right people" and described his "career which virtually spanned the world, taking him from South America to Japan, and from Southern Africa to the foothills of the Himalayas.