Sir Donald Maitland

Able and determined, the silver-haired Maitland, a diminutive (5ft 4in) Scot, rose on his merits until Harold Wilson, coming to power in 1974, replaced him as Ambassador to the United Nations with Ivor Richard, who had failed to win a seat. Though he returned to the diplomatic front line, this interruption to his career probably cost him the headship of the diplomatic service.

Despite — or maybe because of — his height, Maitland was totally fearless. When George Brown, whose private office he headed, flew into a rage with him, he responded: “Secretary of State, you don’t think somebody my size has got where I’ve got by kow-towing to bully-boys, do you?”

When Nigel Lawson sacked Glyn England as chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board on the pretext that England had not kept his officials informed, Maitland wrote a letter to England (for publication) refuting the claim.

As a diplomat, he was courageous in the field. When in 1958 rebel militia in Lebanon warned him to evacuate the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies (Mecas), he refused to budge until the shooting started, then led his charges out under fire.

As ambassador to Libya after Colonel Gaddafi seized power, he paused during a meeting with the revolutionary leader to push away an automatic pointed at his stomach.

Heading the Foreign Office news department in the mid-1960s, Maitland developed a formidable reputation as a briefer of journalists — often performing the task standing on a bench. He had a habit of cocking his head to one side when delivering a message that he (and his audience) knew was less than the whole story.

Heath, with whom he had worked during Harold Macmillan’s failed attempt to join the EEC, took him to Downing Street as his press secretary. The move was not a total success; Maitland, from his experience with diplomatic correspondents, expected the Lobby to act as a conduit for the government’s position, and became irritated that it developed story lines of its own.

Yet while Maitland never warmed to the Lobby, it generally respected him. The only times the relationship frayed were when Maitland tried to put up the shutters. This occurred when he suggested that local police could cope with the removal of the Palestinian guerrilla Leila Khaled from a jet at Heathrow, only for hijackers to secure her release by blowing up three airliners.

In three years at Number 10 Maitland became one of Heath’s most trusted advisers, notably on industrial relations and Northern Ireland, where he kept a line open to Catholic opinion. Critics blamed him for what they saw as Heath’s presidential style of government, and Labour grew frustrated at his skill in getting Heath on to current affairs programmes — to which they had no right of reply — rather than ministerial broadcasts, for which they would be guaranteed equal time.

Maitland had a drily amusing side. He was also a qualified pilot and a consummate mimic, with the veteran Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko his most effective target.

Donald James Dundas Maitland was born in Edinburgh on August 16 1922, the son of Thomas Maitland . He was educated at George Watson’s College and Edinburgh University, where he took a war degree before joining the Royal Scots in 1941. He went on to serve with the 6th Rajputana Rifles in India, the Middle East and Burma.

Maitland joined the Foreign Service in 1947, learning Arabic at one of the last classes Mecas held in Jerusalem before it moved to Jordan. His first postings were to Iraq, as consul at Amara, and, for three years, to the British embassy in Baghdad. Life there was then so congenial that his wife painted the Tigris from their riverside home.

After two years as private secretary to the minister of state, Lord Reading, Maitland returned to the Middle East in 1956 as director of Mecas, now at Chamlann outside Beirut (locals knew it simply as the “spy school”). In July 1958 he received a message from Druze rebels led by Kamal Jumblatt: “There are too many Syrians in your area. We are going to attack them. Get out immediately as we do not want any of you to get hurt.”

Maitland paid no attention, as previous warnings had come to nothing. “Then at dawn the firing started. It soon became evident that this was serious. I sent messages to my pupils and staff; they gathered at my house, then we started to get out. The road was raked with gunfire as both sides shot at each other. We managed to find a track leading round behind the village so that we were shielded from anything except possible stray shots.” In all 44 people took refuge in a Beirut hotel, and British wives and children were sent home.

He left the “spy school” in 1960 . Back at the FO, he became deputy head of news and spokesman for Heath’s team negotiating with the EEC. After President de Gaulle’s “Non”, he moved to Cairo with the rank of counsellor.

He was brought back to the FO in 1965 as Head of News; the patient Michael Stewart was Foreign Secretary, but the mercurial Brown soon replaced him. On his appointment, Brown entered the FO by a side entrance, stranding Maitland and a pack of photographers at the front door.

Brown made Maitland his principal private secretary, and charged him with reopening the Common Market negotiations. The work continued after Stewart returned following Brown’s resignation.

In 1969 Maitland was appointed ambassador to Libya just as King Idris was deposed; he arrived in Tripoli that September with no idea who was running the Revolutionary Command Council that had taken over. Within weeks Libya abrogated its defence agreement with Britain, and ordered the closure of its remaining bases at El Adem and Tobruk and the withdrawal of all forces.

Maitland proposed co-operation on a new basis, but after a mob stoned the British embassy on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and Libya nationalised local interests of Barclays Bank and ended British American’s tobacco monopoly, withdrawal was the only option.

When Heath came to power soon afterwards, he recalled Maitland to be his press secretary. Meeting President Pompidou to convince him that Britain was serious about joining the EEC, Heath took Maitland with him, who soon became a power behind the throne.

In May 1973 Maitland moved to the UN as Britain’s Permanent Representative. He hurried from the aircraft to the Security Council to accuse Israel of an “act of official violence” for forcing down an Iraqi airliner because it thought Arab guerrillas were on board. When the Yom Kippur War broke out that October, he endeavoured to secure a ceasefire, then welcomed the sending of a UN emergency force despite Israel’s warnings that it would be useless.

Maitland warned Spain that measures it was taking toward Gibraltar were making a change in its status “exceedingly unattractive” to the people of the Rock, and criticised the UN General Assembly for passing resolutions that “lack any touch of reality”. Then, in March 1974, he was recalled after Richard’s shock defeat for the safe Labour seat of Blyth, and Wilson’s almost equally unexpected return to power.

There was no obvious job for Maitland, so after being sent back to Baghdad in an effort to restore diplomatic relations, a new post was created for him: deputy under-secretary at what was now the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in charge of economic questions.

After the convincing “Yes” vote in the 1975 EEC referendum and the end to Labour’s boycott of European institutions, Maitland was sent to Brussels as Permanent Representative to the Community; he soon proved his worth to a government that had tried to keep him at arm’s length. As well as mending fences, Maitland attended councils of ministers when no British minister was available and chaired them during the British presidency in 1977. It was on behalf of this presidency that Maitland accepted Portugal’s application to join.

At the end of 1979 he returned to the FCO as deputy to the permanent under-secretary, Sir Michael Palliser, during the crises over the Ayatollah’s rise to power in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Then, to widespread surprise, Margaret Thatcher promoted him, in June 1980, to Permanent Secretary at the Department of Energy; his appointment was seen as an attempt to strengthen relations with the Arab members of Opec.

Maitland was, by now, untouchable; in the run-up to his retirement in December 1982 he admitted that the government had decided not to stand up to the miners that year, and upset Labour by telling the Institute of Directors the balance between the public and private sectors in energy should encourage innovation, enterprise and efficiency.

He became a government director of Britoil, deputy chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority and chairman of the Independent Commission on Worldwide Telecommunications Development. He noted that three-quarters of the world’s telephones and televisions were in just nine countries.

His views on Whitehall were heard with respect. He cautioned that reforms in government were “not at all easy to absorb”, and called on “those who wield effective influence in government to restore the morale of the civil service”.

He declared that the FCO paid inadequate attention to its relations with parliament, pressed for Britons working for EC institutions to have the right to vote in UK elections and told the government it was “out of order” to publish advertisements paving the way for water privatisation before the legislation was through.

In 1989 Maitland was appointed chairman of the Health Education Authority. He pressed particularly for curbs on the BBC showing advertisements from tobacco companies sponsoring sporting events they were broadcasting; in some snooker tournaments, he said, they were on screen for four minutes in every hour.

His greatest headache, though, was crafting a message for young people in the fight against Aids, given pressure from Conservative MPs for nothing to be said that condoned casual sex.

Maitland ordered a suspension of the authority’s programmes on HIV and sexual health after a new health minister, Dr Brian Mawhinney, banned a pocket guide it had commissioned as “smutty”. His term ended in 1994.

Maitland was at various times pro-Chancellor of Bath University ; and president of the Federal Trust for Education and Research, and the Bath Institute for Rheumatic Diseases . He had been chairman of the Charlemagne Institute and a member of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission .

He was appointed OBE in 1960 and CMG in 1967; knighted in 1973; and appointed GCMG in 1977.

Donald Maitland married, in 1950, Jean Young, with whom he had a son and a daughter.