My father, Hardy Frost, who has died aged 94, was a delightful, diffident, modest and caring man. In the years after the second world war, he worked in the Cabinet Office, the International Labour Office and the Treasury and was a financial journalist on the Manchester Guardian before he joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1951. In 1957 he was posted to Zurich, where he was vice-consul until 1961. The rest of his career was spent in London, and he was held in high regard by many in Whitehall and the Bank of England. He was appointed a CBE in 1972.
He was born Abraham Edward Hardy Frost in Colchester, Essex. As a young man, he developed interests he maintained for the rest of his life: history, poetry, music and the natural world. His father was a dentist and intended Hardy to follow in his footsteps, as his brothers had done, but Hardy had other ideas. He won a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first-class degree in modern languages. He spoke French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian, and had a good working knowledge of Greek and Latin. He then studied privately for a BSc in economics from Richmond College (then part of the University of London, now the American International University in London).
During the second world war he served as a telegraphist with the Royal Navy and worked in the Admiralty and at Bletchley Park – first in the Italian section, translating and writing messages, then far east intelligence, becoming head of Operational Watch in 1944.
He married his first wife, Betty, in 1948, and they had two daughters, me and Jennifer. Betty died in 1971. Hardy retired to Dorset in 1976 with his second wife, Gillian, whom he married in 1972, and her four children. He became very involved with the local community. Hardy served on the parish council for many years and took on the role of rights of way officer for the local area, maintaining paths for others to enjoy walking. In 1976 he wrote and published a series of poems about Dorset entitled In Dorset of Course.
He always enjoyed visits from his family, including his 15 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. They all survive him, along with me and Jennifer, and Gillian's children. Gillian died in 2010.