Court full dress civil uniform

This is the court full dress civil uniform worn by Sir Eric Phipps (1875-1945) as an ambassador during his long career in His Majesty's Diplomatic Service from 1899 until the beginning of World War II in 1939. Ambassadors' coats were distinguished by having, as here, additional extensive gold embroidery on the seams of the sleeves and back.

Phipps served in several embassies including Constantinople and Petrograd but from 1916 onwards his career focused on Western Europe with tours of duty in Paris and Brussels, including duty at both the 1919 Paris Peace conference and the World War I Reparations Conferences at the Hague 1929-30, seeking to arrange payments by Germany for the damage caused by the war. From 1928 he was also Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Austria.

In 1933 he became Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary in Berlin where, on behalf of the British government, he had meetings with Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party and Chancellor of Germany in 1933. His dispatches gave an important account of Nazi politics in the lead up to World War II. Phipps was a man of principle, and his correspondence shows he was a shrewd judge of the real nature of Hitler and his regime.

In 1937 Phipps moved again to Paris, where he worked to strengthen relations between Britain and France. Sir Eric remained in Paris until November 1939 when suffering from ill-health, he retired to Wiltshire where from 1943-44 he served as High Sheriff for Wiltshire, dying in 1945.