Oliver Miles
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Oliver Miles is a retired ambassador and the chairman of MEC International.
He was educated at Ampleforth College and Oxford University, where he read Classical Mods and Oriental Studies (Arabic and Turkish). He did national service in the Royal Navy and studied Russian.
He joined the British Foreign Office in 1960 and served as a diplomat in the Arab world, Cyprus and Greece, as well as periods in London. In 1984 he was appointed British Ambassador to Libya, where he broke off diplomatic relations after the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher. From 1985-8 he was Ambassador to Luxembourg. After two years at the Northern Ireland Office in Belfast he became the first Director-General of the Joint Directorate for Overseas Trade Services, a new unit set up to improve British Government services to exporters, traveling widely both in Britain and abroad. At the same time he was a Non-executive Director of Vickers Defence Systems. From 1993 to 1996 he was Ambassador to Greece.
After retiring from HM Diplomatic Service in 1996 he joined MEC International, a consultancy promoting business with the Middle East. He was for some years President of the Society for Libyan Studies, a learned society under the aegis of the British Academy, and Chairman of HOST, a charity which arranges visits to British homes for foreign students in Britain. He is a Deputy Chairman of the Libyan British Business Council, set up with the approval of the British and Libyan Governments to promote trade and investment.
He has been a regular visitor to the Middle East and to the Former Soviet Union (including in recent years as an election observer) since 1958. In 2004 he was one of 52 retired ambassadors who wrote a letter to the Prime Minister calling for a new approach to policy in Palestine and Iraq.
He is married with four children, and is an amateur flautist and bird-watcher.
