Senior civil servants are generally expected to be shadowy figures, influential rather than powerful, discreet rather than flamboyant, probably — in Gladwyn’s generation at any rate — educated at Winchester. To describe such a being as a Titan might seem an oxymoron. The Titans, it will be remembered, were a family of giants who had the temerity to challenge Zeus and duly got their comeuppance. In this well-researched and thoughtful book Sean Greenwood convinces one that in the case of Lord Gladwyn — not least in the ill-judged challenge to the superiority of Zeus — this far-fetched analogy is amply justified.
Greenwood identifies three fields in which Gladwyn’s contribution was of signal importance: the setting up of the United Nations, the evolution of Nato and the development of Britain’s policy towards Europe. The temptation for a biographer must always be to confuse post hoc and propter hoc — because Gladwyn took a particular view about a certain subject and that view became the official policy of the British government, Gladwyn must therefore have been responsible.
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