Rowland Sperling Explained

Honorific Prefix:Sir
Rowland Sperling
Ambassador From:British
Country:Finland
Term Start:1930
Term End:1935
Predecessor:Sir Ernest Rennie
Successor:Herbert Grant Watson
Ambassador From1:British
Country1:Bulgaria
Term Start1:1928
Term End1:1929
Predecessor1:Sir William Erskine
Successor1:Sir Sydney Waterlow
Ambassador From2:British
Country2:Switzerland
Term Start2:1924
Term End2:1928
Predecessor2:Sir Milne Cheetham
Successor2:Sir Claud Russell
Birth Name:Rowland Arthur Charles Sperling
Birth Date:4 January 1874
Birth Place:London, England
Death Place:Mere, Wiltshire, England
Children:3
Education:Eton College
Alma Mater:New College, Oxford

Sir Rowland Arthur Charles Sperling (4 January 1874 –1 August 1965) was a British diplomat who served as ambassador to Switzerland, Bulgaria, and Finland.

Early life

Sperling was born in 1874 in London, England the son of Commander Rowland Money Sperling (1841–), RN, and Marian Charlotte, daughter of Charles Keyser. He was educated at Eton College and New College Oxford in 1892. He left New College in 1899 without a degree and went to work as a clerk in the Foreign Office.[1]

Diplomat

He was sent to Russia in 1902 to learn Russian before becoming acting third secretary in St Petersburg in the Diplomatic Service. He returned to the Foreign Office in 1905 first as an assistant clerk, then as a senior clerk and in 1914 Head of the Western Department. He stayed in the Foreign Office during the first world war. He was attached to the Paris Peace Conference : assistant secretary Foreign Office 1919.[2] In 1920, he represented the United Kingdom at a conference on international communications in Washington. By 1924 he was transferred to the Diplomatic Service and he was appointed Minister at Berne, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Switzerland 1924–28.[2] In 1928 he moved as Minister to Sofia, Bulgaria 1928–9, and then to Finland 1930–35.[3] He retired from the service in 1935.

Family life

In 1905, Sperling married Dorothy Constance Kingsmill (1874–1951), daughter of William Howley Kingsmill (1838–1894), DL, JP, of Sydmonton Court, Sydmonton, and Constance Mary(died 1947), daughter of Sir Wyndham Spencer Portal, 1st Bt. They had two sons and a daughter. One son was killed on active service in a flying accident at Manston Airport in March 1940. His wife died in 1951.

Following retirement to Kingsclere, Hampshire, he was a member of Hampshire County Council from 1936 to 1949, and High Sheriff of Hampshire from 1945 to 1946. Sperling died on 8 January 1965 at his home in Wiltshire aged 91.

Honours and awards

Notes and References

  1. Sir Rowland Sperling . 9 January 1965 . 12 . 56215 .
  2. Kelly's Handbook, 1938.
  3. C. Cook, P. Jones, J. Sinclair, Jeffrey Weeks, Sources in British Political History, 1900–1951, p. 228, Ray Jones, The nineteenth-century Foreign Office: an administrative history, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1971 – 224 pp., p. 183