Sir William Horace Montagu-Pollock KCMG (12 July 1903 – 26 September 1993) was a British diplomat who was ambassador to Syria, Peru, Switzerland and Denmark.
[citation needed] He joined the Diplomatic Service in 1927[1] He served at Rome, Belgrade, Prague, Vienna and Stockholm, where he was chargé d'affaires during the Second World War.
He then worked at the Foreign Office as the first Head of the Cultural Relations Department, for which he was appointed CMG in the King's Birthday Honours of 1946.
[2] The CRD had its origins in a small Foreign Office section created to give political direction to the British Council and to manage the political and policy aspects of the growing scale of organised international intellectual, cultural, societal and artistic contacts, with a view to promoting Allied goodwill; but it became, almost by accident, a small British front-line unit in a clandestine struggle to prevent Moscow's domination of the world of international movements, federations and assemblies – what would later be called ‘the battle of the festivals’.
He was Chairman of the British Institute of Recorded Sound from 1970–73, Vice-President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music and a member of the Board of Governors of the European Cultural Foundation.