Valentine Lawford
(February 27, 1911 - June 18, 1991) U.K.
Diplomat
Valentine George Nicholas Lawford, born in Hertfordshire, attended Repton School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he read modern and mediaeval languages. He then specialized at the Sorbonne, Strasbourg and in Vienna. From 1939 to 1946 he was the private secretary of Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, Anthony Eden and Ernest Bevin, all three of them Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
During World War II he acted as official interpreter at various conferences and war councils, and was the regular interpreter of Winston Churchill. As part of the Britain's delegation, he took part at the Yalta Conference, Moscow Conference (1945) and Quebec Conference (1943).
In Paris, in the 1930s, Lawford moved in a circle that included: Gertrude Stein, Duff Cooper, Sir Charles Mendl and Elsie de Wolfe, Douglas Fairbanks, the Rothschilds, the de Castellanes, the Windsors, and Nancy Cunard. Valentine Lawford met the German-american fashion photographer Horst P. Horst in 1938, and they remained together until Lawford's death in 1991. Their adopted son was Richard J. Horst.
At the time of his death, Lawford was living in Oyster Bay Cove, New York.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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