William Erskine (diplomat)

Sir William Augustus Forbes Erskine GCMG MVO PC (30 October 1871 – 17 July 1952) was the first British ambassador to the Republic of Poland.

He joined the Foreign Office in 1894[1] and served at Buenos Aires, Teheran, Rome and Stockholm where he was chargé d'affaires in 1913.

He was posted to Athens with the rank of Counsellor of Embassy 1913–17[2] where he was British delegate to the international financial commission which had been established following the Greco-Turkish War (1897) to oversee the public finances of Greece.

He was the first ambassador to Poland since the time of King Jan III Sobieski in the seventeenth century.

[8] He was knighted KCMG in 1926[9] and raised to GCMG in 1930[10] when he was also made a member of the Privy Council.