Ric Todd
Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Republic of Poland

Ric Todd arrived in Warsaw on 11 October 2007 to take up his appointment as British Ambassador in Poland.

Ric was born in 1959 in Sussex but grew up in Rugby in the Midlands. He was educated at Lawrence Sheriff Grammar School and studied history at Oxford, particularly 17th century British history (his hero is Oliver Cromwell).  

He joined the FCO in 1980. He worked in Cape Town/Pretoria from 1981-4, dealing mainly with Namibia. He worked on European Community questions in London from 1984-1987 and then learnt Czech and was posted to Czechoslovakia from 1987-9. He travelled across Central Europe at that time, including to Hungary, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.  

This experience of “real existing socialism” in Central Europe helps him understand how Central Europe is now. He had a minor footnote in history in May 1989 when he was expelled from Prague, with colleagues in the Embassy, as “an enemy of the state” in retaliation for the British expulsion of four Czechoslovak diplomats.  He regards being described as an enemy of the Communist Party and Soviet Union as an honour.  

He then worked in the FCO Economic Relations Department until he learnt German and was posted to Bonn from 1991-95. Between 1995-2001 he did two secondments to the Treasury, dealing first with agriculture, reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, the EU and the “mad cows” crisis. When dealing with agriculture, he visited the Baltic States, Slovakia and Hungary to discuss how to reform agriculture in Central Europe. Then, as Head of the Treasury’s EU Co-ordination and Strategy Team from 1998-2001, he was responsible for Treasury policy on EU enlargement and economic assessment of Central and Eastern Europe.  In this role he travelled extensively in Central and South East Europe. He also dealt with the economics of the Eurozone, trade, economic reform in Europe (the Lisbon Economic Reform Strategy), the reconstruction of the Balkans and the UK input to the EU’s Council of Finance Ministers, ECOFIN.  He was a UK member of the EU Economic Policy Committee for nearly two years.

In 2001 he learned Slovak and went to Slovakia as Ambassador. He was there at a particularly interesting time; Slovakia held critical elections in 2002 (when Slovakia chose parties which could take the country into the EU and NATO) and the difficult and detailed Slovak accession negotiations to join the EU. He liked Slovakia and has many happy memories of the country and the people. His favourite places in Slovakia are Prievidza and Puchov. He acquired a taste for sliwowica and regrets that Poles do not share the Slovaks’ passion for distilled fruit.

For three years from 2004-2007 he was a member of the FCO Board of Management and Finance Director. He regards this as the most difficult job he has done in government because it was about change in the FCO, allocating scarce money among competing priorities, delivering efficiency and reforming the way the FCO used its resources. But as his colleagues in London can testify, he wanted to be Ambassador in Poland and campaigned for the job for three years. In 2007 he spent five months learning Polish – three months in London, a month in Krakow and a month in Sopot and Gdansk.

He calculates that he is the 56th British Ambassador to Poland. All have faced different situations and had different objectives. His aim is to build an even better partnership between the UK and Poland, especially in the EU and NATO, and to help move the EU to more effective policies on energy, Russia, Ukraine and trade. His objective is that the UK and Poland will always vote the same way in the EU and NATO and will work to that end.

Ric has spent a lot of time in Central Europe and likes it very much. He is interested in history and language. He likes walking in woods and looking at buildings.  He intends to travel around Poland. His previous knowledge of Slovak both helps and hinders his ability to speak Polish.

Ric is married to Alison and has three children: the eldest is a student; the second at school in England; the youngest is at school in Poland and already has a better Polish accent than him.