Edward Tomkins’s outstanding characteristics were his calmness and his undemonstrative manner of leadership, qualities apparent at many stages of his long and often dramatic career. After Ampleforth and Trinity College, Cambridge, Edward Emile Tomkins joined the Diplomatic Service on the eve of the war in which he served as liaison officer with the Free French forces. He was with General Koenig through the savage battle for Bir Hakeim in 1941. Making his way back to the British lines through the uncharted desert, he ran into Field Marshal Rommel, who took him prisoner. He later escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy and made his perilous way south across the Apennines and through the German lines.

Recalled to diplomacy after his escape from prison, he was posted to Moscow where he remained until 1946. In between two terms in Washington, he served under Gladwyn Jebb in Paris, where he married Jill Benson, and then in Bonn where Frank Roberts was Ambassador. In Germany he became friends with Klaus von Amsberg, who was to marry Princess Beatrice of the Netherlands later, an example of Tomkins’s serendipitous talent for friendship, from which he was to benefit later when he was appointed Ambassador to The Hague.

When he was Minister in Washington in the 1960s he provided essential and untrumpeted support for an Ambassador who was sometimes in danger of faltering.

His first post as head of mission was in 1970 at The Hague, where he remained two years. But the natural crowning of his career came with his appointment as Ambassador to Paris in 1973. The Agence France Presse hailed it as an historic breakthrough in Franco-British relations: it was the first time a fluent French speaker and a Roman Catholic had been appointed to this senior post. In addition, he had a distinguished war record of service with the Free French Forces of General Leclerc in North Africa — for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. His mission to France was generally considered on the French side of the Channel as beginning under the most favourable auspices. He was, moreover, a convinced European, and a strong believer that Britain’s destiny was bound up with continental Europe and its progress towards unity.

It had not always been easy to convince the Government at home that this was so but Tomkins had the full support of Edward Heath. He played an active part in the negotiations that culminated in Britain’s entry into the European Community in 1973, following a vote by a large majority in the Commons. Tomkins’s personality was a key factor in these negotiations. Apart from his mastery of French, his understanding of French psychology and ability to anticipate French reactions to historical trends, he brought to his mission a love of France and French culture, and a complete absence of the superciliousness traditional to the British Establishment. While he was never suspected of “going native” or of departing from his image of the strong but not silent Englishman. Thus he could explain, to nonplussed but sympathetic Frenchmen, the subtleties of cricket in a way that they could understand.

His natural bonhomie and open mind, coupled with his universally acknowledged skill as a diplomat, which did not exclude great firmness in the defence of British interest and calling a spade a spade when necessary, meant that he was able to establish personal and friendly relations with two very different French Presidents, Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. His earlier spell at the Paris Embassy as press and information counsellor in the 1950s had enabled him to acquire a large circle of contacts in all walks of French life,

and to turn the Hotel de Charost into a pillar of a flourishing entente cordiale. In recognition of his part in strengthening it, he was awarded on retirement from Paris the rare dignity of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour.

After retirement, rather than take up a job in London, Tomkins decided to live in the country and devote himself to local affairs. He was elected to Buckinghamshire County Council and became vice-chairman of the education committee. When neighbouring Stowe School needed help Tomkins was there, eventually becoming chairman of the governors.

Tomkins was a keen gardener and he and his wife greatly enhanced the beauty of their Wren house, Winslow Hall, in Buckinghamshire.

Tomkins’s wife died in 2003. He is survived by a son and two daughters.

Sir Edward Tomkins, GCMG, CVO, diplomat, was born on November 16, 1915. He died on September 20, 2007, aged 91