Graham Mather, President, European Policy Forum, writes: John Hunt (obituary, July 18) had a certain austerity of style, great moral authority and a kind heart. I first met him at a Ditchley Park conference. I was the nervous rapporteur of a working group whose discussions had not been easy. I presented the group’s report to the plenary session. Its chairman, a US official, intervened at once, saying the group’s views were quite different. He set out at length what I should have said. There was a sticky pause. I prayed for dematerialisation. John Hunt, among whose offices was the chairmanship of the Ditchley Foundation, caught the plenary chairman’s eye. He said quietly, but with all the authority of a Cabinet secretary, that while what we had heard certainly represented the US official’s view, what the group members including himself felt had been accurately summed up by the rapporteur.

His kindness, fairness and uprightness helped us mightily when he became the first chairman of the European Policy Forum. When council members agreed to serve they would look down the list of their new colleagues. After the third had said, “Obviously you will be asking John Hunt to be our chairman” I went back to him. He agreed at once to lend his weight to a very fledgeling venture. His support was total, his touch incisive but understated. His clear-eyed understanding of the vicissitudes and compromises of government never shook his authority or integrity.

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster writes: There is one slight blemish in your otherwise admirable notice of John Hunt. The attempt to ban or prevent the serialisation of Richard Crossman’s diaries was made under the Government of Harold Wilson, not that of James Callaghan. Wilson knew that Crossman was not the only member of his 1964-70 Government who had been keeping a diary. He thought that the premature publication of such diaries was improper and he was anxious (for other reasons as well as impropriety) to discourage an unseemly rush of such publications. The stable door having been opened by the Crossman diaries, he sought to restore order by commissioning Lord Radcliffe to prepare the report on ministerial memoirs which was published in 1976.

John Hunt fully endorsed the view that such premature publications were improper, and loyally carried through his role in the legal proceedings against The Sunday Times, though the publicity was most unwelcome to him.

He should not be remembered mainly for that role. He succeeded Sir William Nield as head of the European unit in the Cabinet Office in 1972, after British accession to the European Economic Community had been accomplished, and in that role he led with characteristic efficiency and firmness the difficult process of adjusting Whitehall to the consequences of membership for the business of government.