Robert Chatterton Dickson

Robert Chatterton Dickson is an international affairs consultant based in London. Until June 2026 he was a senior member of the British Diplomatic Service. His 36-year career combined leadership in complex and dangerous environments with London-based appointments at the heart of U.K. foreign policy and national security. His remarks as part of Chautauqua’s probe into “Global Power and Our Evolving International Order” will provide “a view from across the Atlantic,” and in particular on the state of relations among geopolitical powers including the U.K., U.S., European Union, Russia and NATO. Chatterton Dickson served overseas as ambassador to the Republic of North Macedonia, consul general in Chicago, deputy ambassador in Afghanistan during the Afghan Republic, high commissioner in Bangladesh and chargé d’affaires of the U.K. Mission to Afghanistan following the return of the Taliban. In London, he was head of the Foreign Office Counter Terrorism Department and a director in the Cabinet Office National Security Secretariat. In all these roles he worked closely with American colleagues. Chatterton Dickson’s early diplomatic career included working at HQ on Iraq, NATO, UN peacekeeping, arms exports and nuclear arms control and postings to the British embassies in Manila and Washington. Before joining the Diplomatic Service, he worked in investment management and was educated at Cambridge University. Chatterton Dickson knows the U.S. well: besides diplomatic postings in Washington and the Midwest he has been married to an American artist for over 30 years and has four dual-citizen children and family across the country. He first experienced the U.S. at 19, when a cross-country road trip in an unreliable car introduced him to American kindness and hospitality. At Chautauqua he is speaking in a strictly personal capacity.