The grave of James and Denise McAdam Clark at Aldeburgh

Image: © Adrian S Pye Taken: 8 Jun 2023

He is buried with his wife and added to her headstone. James McAdam Clark, CVO, MC, BSc, diplomat and scientist. On leaving school in 1933 he was awarded a Leverhulme Scholarship and graduated from Edinburgh University in 1938. At the outbreak of WW2 he joined the Royal Artillery, serving in North Africa, and Italy, where, as a captain in Heavy Artillery, he was awarded the MC for bravery in the field. Thanks to his scientific background he was sent at the end of hostilities to the Royal Military College of Science. He joined the Ministry of Fuel and Power as a civil servant before being transferred to the Foreign Office and diplomatic service. From 1960 to 1964 he was posted to Vienna as counsellor and the UK's representative to the Atomic Energy Authority. Later, seconded from 1966 to 1970 to the Ministry of Technology. Finally, in 1970 he was sent as Consul General to Paris, where he was to serve under three ambassadors in a seven-year tour of duty and appointed CVO in 1972. He and his wife retired to Aldeburgh in Suffolk. He met his future wife Denise Therese Dufournier, a young French barrister, in 1939. She was to achieve fame as a Resistance worker for Reseau Comet. Betrayed in 1943, she survived incarceration in the Ravensbruck concentration camp to return to England, and marry James in 1946. They had two daughters.

Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0