Currie, Philip Henry Wodehouse, Baron Currie of Hawley (1834 -1906)

Philip Henry Wodehouse Currie, diplomatist, was the fourth son of Raikes Currie, of Bush Hill, Middlesex, and Minley Manor, Hampshire, Member of Parliament for Northampton, and Laura Sophia, eldest daughter of John, 2nd Baron Wodehouse. Educated at Eton, he entered the Foreign Office at the age of twenty, and held many appointments, rising over forty years to become in December 1888 Permanent Under Secretary of State. He was sent as Ambassador to Constantinople,in December 1893, at a critical period in Britain's relations with Turkey, was transferred to the Embassy in Rome in 1898, and retired in 1903. He was made a K.C.B. in 1885, G.C.B. in 1892, and Baron Currie of Hawley in 1899. He married, 24 January 1894, Mary Montgomerie Lamb, widow of Henry Sydenham Singleton, who wrote novels under the pseudonym Violet Fane.