Tom Fletcher, CMG

Tom Fletcher became Principal of Hertford College in September 2020.

He was previously the foreign policy adviser to three UK Prime Ministers (2007-11) and the UK’s Ambassador to Lebanon (2011-15). More recently, he has been a Visiting Professor at New York University, and chaired the International Advisory Council of the Creative Industries Federation, promoting Britain’s most dynamic and magnetic sector overseas. In 2018 he founded The Foundation for Opportunity.

Tom led a review of British diplomacy for the UK Foreign Office in 2016, and on the future of the United Nations for the UN Secretary General in 2017. In 2018 he authored a report on the skills the next generation need to thrive in the 21st century.

His book on the future of statecraft, The Naked Diplomat: Power and Politics in the Digital Age, was published in June 2016 by Harper Collins. He regularly writes for The National, Prospect and other publications, and is working (slowly) on a murder novel and a new book on 21st Century Statecraft.