Frank Ashton-Gwatkin

Frank Ashton-Gwatkin, the Foreign Office’s Head of Economic Relations, is presented as a practical official drawn into the human and diplomatic work of the Munich crisis. Having spent much of the summer in Czechoslovakia listening to Sudeten German grievances, he arrives with relevant regional experience; in Munich, he is asked to use that familiarity to deal with the Czech representatives, even as British policy leaves them facing a stark choice about their country’s territory.

Identity and Background

Ashton-Gwatkin is introduced among three senior Foreign Office officials waiting with their suitcases in Downing Street, ready to travel with the Prime Minister’s party. He is described as bulky and slope-shouldered, with a drooping moustache and a lugubrious manner. His colleagues’ nickname for him, the Walrus, makes that downcast appearance into a memorable shorthand, but his official position gives him a substantial place in the diplomatic machinery: he heads Economic Relations.

His recent work has taken him through Czechoslovakia, where he spent much of the summer listening to Sudeten German grievances. That experience distinguishes him from the other officials in the travel party and helps explain why he is later asked to approach the Czech representatives. The account does not give him a separate statement of policy or a personal account of that earlier work; it establishes his knowledge through the task assigned to him and the contrast between his regional familiarity and the increasingly severe choices being imposed at the conference.

The Munich Assignment

At the Regina Palast Hotel, Ashton-Gwatkin is already trying to reach the Czech representatives when Hugh Legat encounters him in a corridor. He complains that the telephones are hopeless and says he has just been with them. The exchange places him in the practical, often frustrating work behind the negotiations: contact must be maintained, people must be found, and discussions must continue even when the means of communication fail.

The difficulty is not merely logistical. As the delegates discuss what to do, William Strang observes that an agreement will be hard to make without the Czechs and tells Ashton-Gwatkin to go and soothe them, because he knows them better than the others. The instruction recognizes his experience but also gives it a limited purpose. He is not sent to alter the British position; he is asked to manage the response of those who will bear its consequences. Later, tired of the task, he says he supposes he should talk to the poor old Czechos, if he can find a working telephone. His weary remark conveys the strain of the assignment without suggesting that he can resolve the underlying conflict.

Explaining the Proposed Settlement

Ashton-Gwatkin takes part in the meeting at which Sir Horace Wilson presents the proposed territorial settlement to the Czech representatives, including Hubert Masarík and Vojtek Mastny. Wilson spreads a map across the table, with the territories to be transferred to Germany marked in red and an area to the south shaded for a plebiscite. After Wilson tells them that this is the best Britain could secure, he turns to Ashton-Gwatkin to explain what rejection would mean.

Ashton-Gwatkin spells out the consequence slowly: if the Czechs refuse, they will have to settle their affairs with the Germans entirely on their own. He adds that the French may express the message more gently, but share the British view and are disinterested. The phrasing leaves little room for the Czech representatives to mistake the position. Their government is being urged to accept the terms not under the protection of a firm allied guarantee, but with the warning that refusal will leave it isolated. When the representatives fall silent and ask to take the map, Wilson carefully rolls it up and hands it to them; Hugh Legat is then asked to show them back to their room and arrange access to a telephone.

Diplomatic Function and Significance

Ashton-Gwatkin’s part in these scenes is defined by the tension between familiarity and power. His summer listening to Sudeten German grievances gives him a particular connection to the dispute, and his knowledge of the Czech representatives makes him the official chosen to approach them. Yet when he speaks at the decisive meeting, his function is to state the limits of British and French support, not to offer the Czechs a way out of them. His regional experience serves the process of communicating an imposed settlement as much as it serves understanding the people affected by it.

The novel gives this work through concrete gestures and duties rather than an extended account of Ashton-Gwatkin’s private feelings: the failed calls, Strang’s request that he soothe the representatives, the map on the table, and the deliberate explanation of isolation. His weary manner recurs, but the scenes do not establish him as the author of British policy or give him a power to change it. Instead, he embodies the mid-level diplomatic labour through which decisions made by governments become immediate and personal for the people asked to accept them.