Geoffrey Cox — New Zealand diplomat

Newly-appointed Secretary of External Affairs Alister McIntosh’s initial challenge in securing a high-flyer for New Zealand diplomacy became Geoffrey Cox, who for 21 months in the middle of the Second World War left the battlefield to be Walter Nash’s deputy at the New Zealand Legation in Washington. He had been serving in General Freyberg’s intelligence section. At the end of his Washington stint, he went back to war determined that his future peace-time career would not be as a New Zealand diplomat. Nash had seen to that. Cox found him to be an intolerable boss, while coming to respect Alister McIntosh highly.