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Mr David Warren

  1. Mr David Warren
    The British Ambassador to Japan

    David Warren joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1975, and has spent much of his career dealing with Japanese and East Asian affairs, in both Tokyo and London. Following two years full-time Japanese language study, he has served twice in the British Embassy in Tokyo, as Private Secretary to the Ambassador and then Second (later First) Secretary, Economic from 1978 to 1981, and as Commercial Counsellor from 1993 to 1998.

    After two years in the early 1980s in the FCO’s Personnel Policy Department, he dealt with EU/Japan trade and economic relations (and multilateral trade policy issues more generally) in the FCO’s European Community Department from 1983 to 1986. From 1987 to 1990, he served as Head of the Political Section in the British High Commision in Nairobi, Kenya. He returned to London as the Deputy Head of the FCO’s Far Eastern Department from 1990 to 1991. He was seconded to the Cabinet Office (Office of Science and Technology) for two years from 1991, as the Head of the International Division, dealing among other issues with UK/Japan science and technology co-operation. Following his second tour of duty in Tokyo, from 1998 to 2000 he was the Head of the FCO’s China Hong Kong Department.

    In 2000, he became one of the Directors and senior management team for the new Government trade promotion organisation, British Trade International, later UK Trade and Investment, where he spent the next four years in charge of different aspects of sector and market-oriented international trade development. In 2004, he was appointed Director, Human Resources, for the FCO, and a member of the FCO Board of Management. He left this post in October 2007, and took up the post of British Ambassador to Japan in July 2008 in succession to Sir Graham Fry.

    David was born in 1952, and educated at Epsom College and Exeter College, Oxford, where he read English Literature. He is married to Pamela, who is a teacher. He is a member of the Japan Society Council and of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. His interests include all aspects of the arts, particularly the theatre and its history.