Victor Mallet

Sir Victor Mallet (9 April 1893 – 18 May 1969) was a British diplomat and author.

Career
Victor Alexander Louis Mallet was educated at Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1914 he joined the Cambridgeshire Regiment and served during World War I with the British Expeditionary Force and later in Ireland, reaching the rank of Captain. He joined the Diplomatic Service in 1919 and held posts in Tehran 1919–22 and 1933–35, Buenos Aires 1926–28, Brussels 1929–32, Washington D.C. 1936–39 and in the Foreign Office 1922–26 and 1932. He was Envoy to Sweden 1940–45 during World War II and Ambassador to Spain 1945–46 and to Italy 1947–53.

Family
Victor Mallet was son of Sir Bernard Mallet and his wife Marie, daughter of Henry John Adeane by his wife, Lady Elizabeth Yorke, daughter of the 4th Earl of Hardwicke. His mother was a Maid of Honour to Queen Victoria and he was godson to the Queen. His book Life with Queen Victoria, a record of his mother's letters written during her service, was published in 1968.

He married Christiana Jean Andreae, daughter of Herman Anton Andreae, of Moundsmere Manor, in Hampshire, and his wife, Christiana Candida (née Ahrens) in 1925; they had three sons and a daughter, Anne Marie, who married Patrick Butler, 18th/28th Baron Dunboyne in 1950.

Publications

 * Life with Queen Victoria: Marie Mallet's Letters from Court, 1887-1901 (editor), John Murray, London, 1968. ISBN 0719517834

Honours
Victor Mallet was appointed CMG in the New Year Honours of 1934 and CVO in 1939. He was knighted KCMG in the New Year Honours of 1944 and raised to GCMG in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1952.

Ancestry
Mallet's father's family was primarily of gentry and civil service classes. His mother's family was aristocratic, including prominent historical figures and MPs. Through Marie Adeane's maternal line great-great-grand-mother Lady Anne Lyon, he was a fifth cousin of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother; their most recent common ancestors were Thomas Lyon, 8th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and Jean Nicholsen, his wife.