My friend Sir Brian Crowe, who has died aged 82, was a diplomat who, after a career at the Foreign Office, spent his last eight years as a civil servant at the European Union, where as director general for external affairs he tried to create a common foreign and security policy for the EU. The job, which he took at the behest of the British government in 1994, was both “fascinating, but also very frustrating”, he later recalled. A pragmatic Europhile, he lacked the institutional backing in Brussels to forge an effective EU foreign policy. But his role, a creation of the Maastricht Treaty, also kept him engaged with issues he had encountered previously in Moscow, Washington, Bonn, Brussels, Vienna and London during 33 years with the Foreign Office. Brian was born in London into a diplomatic family. It was in Tokyo that his UK diplomat father, Eric, who died when Brian was 14, met and married his mother, Virginia (nee Teusler), an American descended from Robert E Lee, the confederate general, and the Native American princess Pocahontas. After Sherborne school in Dorset he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics. He joined the Foreign Office straight from university, and was posted to the Moscow embassy in 1962. He was there for two years and enjoyed his posting during the relative freedom of the Nikita Khrushchev era. He returned to Britain in 1964 as a desk officer for Romania and Hungary until 1967, during which time he was also a resident clerk, covering at the Foreign Office on evenings and weekends in return for a free flat at the top of the department building. In 1967 he helped negotiate Britain’s withdrawal from Aden, and in 1968 he was posted to the Washington embassy as a first secretary, dealing with the press. In 1973 he went to Bonn as head of chancery, also working on issues related to the European Economic Community (EEC). Three years later he was promoted to head the FO policy planning staff in London, and in 1979 he was transferred to Brussels as head of chancery in what was effectively the UK embassy to the EEC. By 1982 he had returned to London as head of the FO’s external EEC department, dealing with EEC trade relations in Africa and elsewhere. After a posting in 1985 back to Washington as minister (commercial) at the embassy there, in 1989 he was made UK ambassador to Austria, later in that role engaging in ill-fated efforts to bring about a peaceful break-up of Yugoslavia. His final FO posting, in 1992 was as deputy under secretary of state, with responsibilities that included trade policy. He then left the FO to take up his post with the EU, before retiring in 2002. Of powerful intellect, Brian could be brusque and perhaps because of this he never reached the pinnacle of his chosen profession. Instead he operated efficiently and effectively in many roles on both sides of the Atlantic and as an occasional troubleshooter. He married Virginia Willis, a House of Commons researcher, in 1969; her charm and empathy complemented his more reserved character. Virginia died in 2019. He is survived by their two sons, Alex and Charlie, and by three sisters.