Michael Maclay

Michael Maclay, diplomat, journalist and spy

As has been noted in Private Eye, Maclay, worked on Weekend World at LWT under John Birt and Peter Mandelson.

A career Foreign Office official, he left the diplomatic service for a media career, first at LWT and then, with David Lipsey, as a founding figure of the Sunday Correspondent. After that paper's collapse Maclay was rapidly recruited to Robert Maxwell's new newspaper venture, The European. A later appointment took him out of journalism and back into diplomacy as special adviser to the European Union's High Representative in the former Yugoslavia, the Swedish Conservative, Carl Bildt. He was also a special adviser to Douglas Hurd, when he was Foreign Secretary.

'Educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Freiburg, he has been a diplomat, a journalist and a senior political adviser' McLay was also an early member of BAP and is involved in Hakluyt: the strategic intelligence firm, many of whose directors were formerly senior figures in MI6. He is 'Chairman of the Citizenship Foundation, a British charity which encourages active and effective citizenship, Senior Adviser to the Franco-British-German Club of Three, and a member of the Advisory Board of the British American Project.'

From the Club of Three website:

Michael Maclay has been closely involved with the Club of Three since helping Lord Weidenfeld to set it up in 1995/6. He was eight years a career diplomat, serving in Lagos, the British Mission to the United Nations, and in the Foreign Office, and eight years in the media, where he worked as a television producer and reporter, and a newspaper journalist and editor. Returning to the Foreign Office, he was then Special Adviser to Douglas Hurd, dealing mainly with the politics of the European Union and the Balkans. After signature of the Dayton Agreement he joined Carl Bildt , High Representative for Bosnia, as his Special Adviser and Chief Spokesman.

Maclay at a reception in honour of Douglas Hurd at the German Embassy in London, 24 May 2005

Affiliations

• Citizenship Foundation, Trustee [2]
• He is now Chairman of the strategic consultancy Montrose Associates,
• Senior Adviser to the Franco-British-German Club of Three,
• a member of the Advisory Board of the British American Project.
• director of Hakluyt

Publications

His publications include Multi-Speed Europe (Chatham House, 1992), Maastricht Made Simple (The European 1993), and the Pocket History of the European Union (Sutton 1998).