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|name = The Baroness Park of Monmouth
|image = Baroness Park of Monmouth 2010.png
|birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1921|09|01|}}
|death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|2010|03|24|1921|09|01}}
|title = Baroness Park of Monmouth
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==Early life and education==
Daphne Park was born to John Alexander and Doreen Gwynneth Park. Her father had contracted tuberculosis as a young man and was sent to Africa for rest and recuperation. He moved from South Africa to [[Nyasaland]] (now [[Malawi]]), and served as an intelligence officer during [[World War II]]. Thereafter he owned a tobacco plantation
When Park was 11, she returned to England and was educated at [[Rosa Bassett School]] in [[Streatham]] and at [[Somerville College, Oxford]], where she graduated with a B.A. in modern languages in 1943. She was further educated at [[Newnham College, Cambridge]], where she received a Certificate of Competent Knowledge in Russian in 1952.
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In 1948, she was attached to the [[Foreign Office]], while actually working for the [[Secret Intelligence Service]] (SIS, aka [[MI6]]), becoming Third Secretary of the United Kingdom's delegation to [[NATO]] in 1952. She then became Second Secretary of the [[Embassy of the United Kingdom in Moscow|British Embassy in Moscow]] between 1954 and 1956.
From 1959 to 1961 she was Consul and First Secretary to [[Kinshasa|Léopoldville]], which in practice meant being head of MI6 there. British parliamentarian [[David Lea, Baron Lea of Crondall|David Lea]] wrote that shortly before she died, she claimed to have been involved organising the abduction and murder of [[Patrice Lumumba]] during the [[Congo Crisis]]. Park (allegedly) confided to Lea that the reasoning behind the assassination was MI6 fears that Lumumba would hand over the high-value Katangese [[uranium]] deposits of [[Shinkolobwe]] as well as the diamonds and other important minerals largely located in the [[Katanga Province|secessionist eastern state of Katanga]] to the [[Soviet Union|Russians]].<ref>[http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n07/letters Letters, ''We did it''], ''London Review of Books'', Vol. 35 No. 7, 11 April 2013</ref> The Shinkolobwe uranium mine provided the uranium used by the [[Manhattan Project]], including in [[Nuclear weapons|atomic bombs]] dropped on the Japanese cities [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945]].<ref name = "WP">Compare:{{cite news|last= McCrummen|first= Stephanie|title= Nearly Forgotten Forces of WWII|url= https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/03/AR2009080302959.html|agency= Washington Post Foreign Service|date= 4 August 2009|
She rose further through the ranks of the Foreign Office to serve in the [[British High Commission]] in [[Lusaka]] from 1964 to 1967 and then [[Consul-General]] to [[Hanoi]] from 1969 to 1970. In 1972 she was [[Chargé d'Affaires]] of the British Embassy of [[Ulan Bator]] for several months. From 1973 onwards she served in the Foreign Office then retired two years early in 1979 to become Principal of Somerville College, Oxford.<ref name="DT" />
Despite her known intelligence service, SIS would neither confirm nor deny she was under their employment.<ref>{{cite news |last=Warrell |first=Helen |date=8 December 2022 |title=The secret lives of MI6's top female spies |url=https://www.ft.com/content/741772c0-ee76-4d3d-bfcd-4fabc1fb405d |work=Financial Times |location= |access-date=20 December 2022}}</ref>
==Affiliations==
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==Personal life==
Park was unmarried and had no children. She died after a long illness on 24 March 2010, aged 88.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7076407.ece | location=London | work=The Times | first=Michael | last=Evans | title=Daphne Park MI6 woman with a 30year secret career dies at 88 | date=26 March 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=http://news.scotsman.com/obituaries/Obituary-Daphne-Park-Baroness-Park.6186737.jp | location=Edinburgh | work=The Scotsman | title=Obituary: Daphne Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth, MI6 Spy | date=29 March 2010}}</ref> A Service of Thanksgiving for the Life and Work of Baroness Park was held on Tuesday 26 October 2010 and the eulogy was given by fellow ex-spy [[Mark Allen (businessman)|Sir Mark Allen, CMG]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sfclub.org/daphneypark.htm |title=
==References==
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* Paddy Hayes: Queen of spies, The autobiography of Daphne Park. Duckworth Publishers, 2015.
* [[Susan Williams (historian)|Susan Williams]]: Spies in the Congo: The Race for the Ore that Built the Atomic Bomb. Hurst, June 2016, {{ISBN|9781849046381}}
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[[Category:1921 births]]
[[Category:2010 deaths]]
[[Category:Burials in Oxfordshire]]
[[Category:Academics of the University of Kent]]
[[Category:Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge]]
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[[Category:Fellows of the Royal Asiatic Society]]
[[Category:Life peeresses created by Elizabeth II]]
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[[Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire]]
[[Category:People from Streatham]]
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[[Category:British women diplomats]]
[[Category:Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford]]
[[Category:20th-century British diplomats]]
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