20 Facts About Ralph Wigram

Ralph Follett Wigram CMG was a British government official in the Foreign Office.

Ralph Wigram helped raise the alarm about German rearmament under Hitler during the period prior to World War II.

Ralph Wigram's role was brought to public attention by the Southern Television drama serial Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, and later by the biographical movie about Churchill, The Gathering Storm.

Ralph Wigram had reached a level in that department which entitled him to express responsible opinions upon policy, and to use a wide discretion in his contacts, official and unofficial.

Ralph Wigram was a charming and fearless man, and his convictions, based upon profound knowledge and study, dominated his being.

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Ralph Wigram saw as clearly as I did, but with more certain information, the awful peril which was closing in upon us.

From 1933 onwards, Ralph Wigram became keenly distressed at the policy of the government and the course of events.

Ralph Wigram had so much force and grace in his conversation that all who had grave business with him, and many others, gave ever-increasing importance to his views.

Ralph Wigram was the son of Eustace Rochester Ralph Wigram and Mary Grace Bradford-Atkinson, and had a younger sister, Isabel.

Ralph Wigram was the grandson of the Right Reverend Joseph Cotton Wigram, Bishop of Rochester, younger son of Sir Robert Wigram, 1st Baronet.

Ralph Wigram was educated at Eton and University College, Oxford.

Ralph Wigram served as temporary secretary at the British Embassy in Washington, DC, from 1916 to 1919, as third secretary at the Foreign Office from 1919 to 1920, as second secretary at the Foreign Office from 1920 to 1921, as first secretary at the British Embassy in Paris from 1924 to 1933, and as counsellor at the Foreign Office and head of the Central Department from 1934 to 1936.

Ralph Wigram was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1933.

Ralph Wigram helped raise the alarm about German rearmament under Adolf Hitler during the period prior to the Second World War.

Ralph Wigram did make at least one attempt at direct publicity – at the time of the occupation of the Rhineland in early 1936, he arranged a press conference for French Minister of Foreign Affairs Flandin, but it had little effect.

Ralph Wigram had begun passing information to Churchill in late 1934, apparently with the knowledge and support of Vansittart.

Ralph Wigram was one of many people passing information to Churchill; Churchill's biographer, Martin Gilbert, estimated that more than 20 were involved.

Ralph Wigram supported it as a means to escape the strictures of disarmament, whereas Churchill felt it condoned German treaty-breaking.

Nevertheless, Ralph Wigram remained a firm opponent of the policy of appeasement.

The fact that his own parents did not attend his funeral in Sussex is cited as support for this theory, although Churchill and his family did attend, along with Robert Vansittart and Brendan Bracken, and his parents were attending a memorial service for him that morning in Devon, where Ralph Wigram was brought up and which was closer to many of his family's friends.