Old Etonian

Sir Hubert Miles Gladwyn Jebb, this month's president of the U.N. Security Council, is tall (6 ft. 2 in.), greying (50 years), well-tailored and crisply spoken. He is also a top man in the British Foreign Office hierarchy and a solid man in his country's squirearchy.

An Old Etonian who won a first class in modern history at Oxford, Sir Gladwyn has a Tudor manor house (Bramfield Hall) in Suffolk, built about 1550 and, as he says, "modernized in 1790." His wife Cynthia is a daughter of the late Sir Saxton Noble. His son Miles is now at Oxford. His daughters, Vanessa (18) and Stella (15), bear the names of the 18th Century ladyloves of Jonathan Swift.

He entered the diplomatic service in 1924, worked in Teheran, Rome and at Whitehall. During World War II he held an important post in the Ministry of Economic Warfare, then took charge of postwar international planning. He played a key advisory role at Dumbarton Oaks, Yalta, San Francisco, did much of the British spadework for U.N. and the North Atlantic pact. Since 1948, as Deputy Under Secretary of State, he has been the trusted (and devoted) assistant to Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.

Sir Gladwyn's arrival as Britain's chief delegate to the U.N. (succeeding Sir Alexander Cadogan) coincided with the return of Russia's Jacob Malik. His polished delivery, his shrewd, easy wit, his telling replies to tedious Malik have made him a favorite of U.N. audiences. A typical TV-fan wire, from Chevy Chase (Md.), read: "You were magnificent in defense of all that is worthwhile in this world." Sir Gladwyn thinks such responses "extraordinary."

"You know," he says, "it makes me realize as never before that people actually listen to us. And that I find very encouraging."

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