William David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech
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(William) David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech (1918–1985) was a British Minister and politician.
Ormsby-Gore was educated at Eton College and Oxford University. During World War II, he served in the 'Phantom' reconnaissance unit and worked with airborne and other special units. After the war, his father, the 4th Baron Harlech, handed over all his land and Ormsby-Gore farmed the 400 acres (1.6 km²) of the Woodhill Estate, Oswestry, Shropshire.
In 1950 he was elected a Conservative MP for Oswestry, where he served until 1961. Under Harold Macmillan he was made Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in 1957 but Macmillan had a better use for him after the election of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in November 1960, as British Ambassador to the United States.
Ormsby-Gore knew Kennedy well from his time in London where his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, had served as American Ambassador. Like Macmillan, he was distantly related to Kennedy, but enjoyed a much closer relationship with the President-elect and his brother Robert. Six months after Kennedy took office, Ormsby-Gore was in Washington. Referred to under the Kennedy administration as "our kind of Ambassador", he supplied Cuban cigars smuggled in his diplomatic bag and a stream of advice; he was practically a resident at the White House. Ormsby-Gore had the status primarily of friend of the family as opposed to merely ambassador. Following President Kennedy's assassination there were even rumours of a romance between the dashing Ormsby-Gore and Jacqueline Kennedy.
Under the LBJ administration relations were obviously more formal but remained excellent and Ormsby-Gore maintained his position even after the Labour government took power in Britain in 1964.
He retired from the post in 1965, a year after his father died and took up his seat in the House of Lords as Lord Harlech, briefly also holding the position of Conservative party deputy chairman. He also had a successful career as a television executive, founding HTV, and served as president of the British Board of Film Classification. But his time back in England was also difficult: his wife died in a car accident in 1967 and his son committed suicide in 1974. Ormsby-Gore himself died in a car crash at the age of 67.
A fierce opponent of oil-barrel politics, Ormsby-Gore's terse dismissal of the phenomenon ran: "It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump." His political influence over the Kennedy administration is much disputed. Unable to persuade the American government to agree the British line over Yemen and the Congo, or to proceed with either a negotiated settlement with Khrushchev over Berlin or the Skybolt ballistic missile programme, he nevertheless played a significant role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and ensured that Britain's views were always taken in account by the American government—though they were not necessarily pursued.
| Preceded by: Sir Harold Caccia | British Ambassador to the United States 1961-1965 | Followed by: Sir Patrick Dean |
| Preceded by: William Ormsby-Gore | Baron Harlech | Followed by: Francis Ormsby-Gore |