Sir Walter Robert (Robin) Haydon, former British ambassador to the Republic, died on December 1st, aged 79. He was one of a small cadre of elite Foreign Office diplomats, hidden persuaders who helped transform the ancient tensions of British-Irish relations and lay the foundations for the present constructive working partnership which has so spectacularly changed the constitutional landscape.
Ever since partition and the foundation of the Irish State, the London-Dublin relationship had been, at best, a cool one. During the 1956-62 IRA Border campaign, official papers in Britain record that an Irish emissary called to the Foreign Office to receive a protest was "more voluble than convincing."
Such diplomatic strains intensified with the outbreak of the modern Troubles in 1968/69 and the burning down of the British embassy after Bloody Sunday in 1972.
They reached their inauspicious peak in 1976 when Christopher Ewart-Biggs, the British ambassador to the Republic, was assassinated by the IRA near Glencairn, his official residence in the south Dublin suburbs.
There could have been no greater violation of diplomatic immunity and the Government's failure to guarantee it plunged diplomatic relations between the two countries to cold depths.
Robin Haydon was the British High Commissioner in Malta at the time and, a day later, he was assigned to Dublin. His arrival was delayed for some weeks after the wheels and chassis of the protected limousine which was being built for him, collapsed under the weight of the heavily armoured bodyshell.
Despite the claustrophobic security straitjacket which thereafter influenced his every move, Haydon quickly made his impressive mark in Dublin where he was regarded as the classic silky diplomat: cautious, guarded, even self-effacing.
He was by no means an Ireland hand. His only previous contact with the country had been a holiday in 1971 and a fleeting official encounter during the negotiations for the ill-fated Sunningdale Agreement in December 1973, when he was serving as the official spokesman for Edward Heath, then the British prime minister.
Given his later role, it was a highly appropriate introduction. By the time Haydon arrived in Dublin the long-term British agenda was clear. Until the outbreak of the Troubles, the policy had been to smother outside interest in what was once described as "John Bull's political slum" and, above all, to discourage any interest or involvement by the Republic in the North.
But after the Sunningdale turning point, Britain decided that the Republic did have a legitimate concern and that the troublesome burden of Northern Ireland should be progressively shared with them. Robin Haydon's task was to take and promote this long view and to create strategic relationships that would withstand the strains of often contradictory, short term, day-to-day political exchanges.
One such embroiled him in public controversy in 1979 when he was called upon to clarify remarks by Secretary of State, Mr Atkins, to Governor Hugh Carey of New York, that Northern Ireland was a British internal affair.
He weathered many such squalls before leaving Dublin for retirement in 1980 (when he was knighted), but his real and lasting contribution was the important groundwork he did in the Irish political and official establishment which five years later would result in the watershed Anglo-Irish Agreement.
Walter Robert Haydon was born on May 29th, 1920, and educated at Dover Grammar School. His first career interest was in journalism and he became a cub reporter on the Kentish Gazette with a view to becoming the Paris correspondent of the London Times, an assignment he coveted. On the outbreak of war in 1939, however, he enlisted in the army. He was later posted to India and served with distinction behind enemy lines with the special forces in Burma but mocked his military career in terms that he had only ever been substantive lieutenant, temporary captain and acting major. In 1946 he joined the Foreign Service and went on to serve in Berne, Turin, Sofia, Bangkok, the UN, Khartoum and Washington.
During his later career his diplomatic skills were sorely tested, dealing with difficult clients like Dr Hastings Banda of Malawi and Dom Mintoff of Malta. His journalistic instincts were deployed during spells as head of news at the Foreign Office and as press secretary to Edward Heath.
The role of ambassador, however, he regarded as the pinnacle of diplomacy practising the art of the possible - and rejected the concept that ambassadors were merely "failed James Bonds."
In 1943, he married Joan Elizabeth Tewson, whom he had met while serving in India. She predeceased him in 1988. They had two daughters and a son and, after the deaths of two of his children in accidents, he is survived by a daughter.
Walter Robert Haydon: born 1920; died December, 1999