Sir Donald Maitland

The former ambassador and linguist, who lived in Bradford on Avon with his wife Jean, was just 5ft 1ins tall. But he had nerves of steel and was never one to give way to bullying.

He once told the Labour government’s Foreign Secretary, the volatile George Brown: “Secretary of State, you don’t think somebody my size has got where I am by kow-towing to bully-boys, do you?”

His courage was legendary. In 1956, as director of the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies near Beirut, he was warned by the militia to flee. He initially refused to move and, only when the firing started, did he evacuate staff and their families to the safety of the Lebanese capital.

As ambassador to Libya, he met the eccentric leader Colonel Gaddafi and, during one meeting, nonchalantly pushed away a pistol pointed at his stomach.

Sir Donald served in the Army in the Middle East, India and Burma, with his knowledge of Arabic leading him to the Foreign Office and a post in Iraq.

In 1960, he became deputy head of news at the Foreign Office and spokesman for Mr Heath’s team involved in the UK’s doomed negotiations with the EEC.

When French president Charles de Gaulle blocked Britain’s entry, Sir Donald moved to Egypt but was back to London in 1965 to head the Foreign Office news operation.

George Brown, with whom Sir Donald had a tempestuous relationship, replaced him as the head of news but charged him with re-opening the Common Market negotiations. But before the EEC talks were completed, Sir Donald was appointed ambassador to Libya.

When Mr Heath won the 1970 election, he made Sir Donald his press secretary and he gained the respect of journalists and became one of Mr Heath’s few close confidants.

In May 1973, Sir Donald moved to New York to be Britain’s ambassador to the UN and was heavily involved in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. Two years later, with Labour back in power, he was in Brussels as ambassador to the then EEC.

In 1979, he returned briefly to the Foreign Office as deputy to the permanent under-secretary, only to be promoted by Margaret Thatcher in 1980 to permanent secretary at the Department of Energy.

After his retirement in 1982, he became a government director of Britoil, deputy chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority and chairman of the Independent Commission on Worldwide Telecommunications Development.

In 1989, Sir Donald was appointed chairman of the now defunct Health Education Authority and was involved in the move to curb tobacco sponsorship of televised events and in the media strategy involving HIV and Aids.

A qualified pilot, he was made an OBE in 1960 and knighted in 1973.

His leaves his widow Jean, whom he married in 1950, a son and daughter, and two granddaughters.

He was closely involved with Bath’s Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases and a long-serving president of the Bath Institute for Rheumatic Diseases.

He was a onetime pro-chancellor at the University of Bath, and was given honorary degrees by it, the University of the West of England and Bath Spa University.

His family will be organising a thanksgiving service on a date to be arranged.