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AMBASSADOR TO BRAZIL
Sir Geofrey Thompson, G.B.E., K.C.M.G., who died on Thursday at the age of 68, was British Ambassador in Bangkok from 1947 to 1950 and British Ambassador to Brazil from 1952 to 1956.
Geoffrey Harrington Thompson, the son of Lieutenant-Colonel C. M. Thompson, I.M.S. was born
March 12, 1879,and educated at Eastmans, Southsea, and Westminster. He served in the R.F.A. in France and Flanders in the First World War and was wounded in 1917. Soon after he was demobilized he passed into the Diplomatic Service. His first posting, like his last, was to Rio de Janeiro. There was a revolution both times. His second stay in Brazil was marred by a revolt and the suicide of General Vary; In the 1920s and 1930s he served in Washington and Chile, and at Yalencia and Hendaye during the Spanish Civil War.
In his reminiscences Front Line Diplomat (1959), a very apt title, he wrote vividly of the struggle, during which he was constantly in danger. During the Second World War he was in Ankara and Baghdad, and after the war was successively Minister and Ambassador in Bangkok. Never for him the life that popular imagination believes diplomatists live, conferences and negotiations sandwiched by good dinners and cocktail parties; for it was during his time in Bangkok that the violent struggle between Army and Navy took place to be settled by Marshal Pibul. Perhaps the chief event from a British point of view was the conclusion of the Anglo-Siamese rice agreement. Thompson did equally good work as Ambassador in Brazil during the sterling crisis of 1953 when Anglo-Brazilian trade virtually collapsed and Brazil's arrears of sterling reached £64m. he played a prominent part in the difficult negotiators for an agreement.
He married in 1926 Louise Sewall, by whom he had a son and a daughter. The marriage was dissolved in 1943 and he married secondly Hilda, daughter of the Rev. D. Westcott.¹

MICHAEL S. THOMPSON died on Thursday, June 3, 2004 at the age of 76. He was born on February 20, 1928 in London, England, the son of the British Ambassador, Sir Geoffrey H. Thompson, and his American wife, Louise C. Sewall. Educated at Andover and Harvard, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, Michael Thompson went on to a career in the US Army, State Department, and Central Intelligence Agency. He served abroad in Morocco, the Congo, Algeria, Belgium, and Italy, and received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal upon his retirement in 1988. He then worked for the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress for six years, before moving to Charlottesville, VA where he studied painting at the Beverley Street School in Staunton. Although most of his time was devoted to his painting, he was also on the Board of the Virginia Center for the Book and an active member of the Charlottesville Committee on Foreign Relations. He is survived by his wife of forty-six years, Beverley; three sons, Christopher, Peter, and Richard; five grandchildren, Tony, Kaelyne, Megan, Darcy, and Rohan; and his sister, Christie Hochschild. The Washington Post, June 8, 2004.