1. Sir Timothy Earle Barrow was born on 15 February 1964 and is a British diplomat who served as Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union from 2017 to 2020 and as the British Ambassador to the European Union from 2020 to 2021.
Tim Barrow served as National Security Adviser from 2022 to 2024.
Tim Barrow was responsible on 29 March 2017 for formally invoking Article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union on behalf of the UK.
Tim Barrow has been a civil servant in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office since 1986.
Tim Barrow served in London, Kyiv, Moscow and Brussels before his appointment as the British Ambassador to Ukraine in 2006.
Tim Barrow was born in 1964 and attended Arnold Lodge School in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, before attending Warwick School.
Tim Barrow then went to Brasenose College, Oxford where he read English.
Tim Barrow is married to Alison nee Watts and they have two sons and two daughters.
Tim Barrow joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1986 and worked as a desk officer in the Western European Department from 1987 to 1988 and the United Nations in New York.
Tim Barrow then did Russian language training for a year before taking part in the British Days Exhibition in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, in 1989.
Tim Barrow was then appointed as a first secretary of the United Kingdom Representation to the European Union, serving from 1996 to 1998, before returning again to London as a private secretary to Robin Cook the Foreign Secretary.
In 2000, Tim Barrow was appointed as head of the Common Foreign and Security Department at the Foreign Office, and in 2003 was appointed as the assistant director of the Europe Directorate - External, including during the UK's presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2005.
Tim Barrow was involved in negotiations over the Treaty of Lisbon at this time.
Tim Barrow served as deputy political director at the Foreign Office from 2005 to 2006 before his appointment as Her Majesty's Ambassador to Ukraine in 2006.
Tim Barrow took up the post in July that year and held it until 2008 when he returned to Brussels as UK Representative to the Political and Security Committee and Ambassador to the Western European Union.
In February 2015, following the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, Tim Barrow hosted the former Prime Minister John Major.
Tim Barrow attended Nemtsov's wake with Major and joined other Western ambassadors in laying flowers at a tribute to him near Red Square.
Tim Barrow appointed two senior civil servants to his team in Brussels in March 2017.
Tim Barrow was responsible for handing over the letter of United Kingdom's invocation of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union in Brussels on 29 March 2017 to European Council President Donald Tusk.
Tim Barrow's letters stated that the UK had no doubt over its sovereignty of Gibraltar, including British Gibraltar Territorial Waters, and that Gibraltar's sovereignty would never be transferred against the democratically expressed wishes of its citizens.
Tim Barrow was appointed as UK ambassador to the US but following the 2024 general election, his appointment was annulled by the new Labour government.
Tim Barrow was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1994 New Year Honours, Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order in 1994, then Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 2006 Birthday Honours, Tim Barrow was promoted Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to British foreign policy and interests in Russia.