Sir Clive Loehnis KCMG

GCHQ Director Clive Loehnis was renowned for his love of waistcoats, and was a bureaucratic tactician with an eye for detail. As routine he spent two days a week operating at the GCHQ Palmer Street offices in London and fostered good working relationships with Whitehall Departments as a result. He would often race Eric Jones back down the A40 in their cars to Cheltenham.

Clive 'Joe' Loehnis was born in 1902 in Chelsea and attended Lockers Park School. He joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1915 and attended the Royal Naval Colleges at Dartmouth, Osborne and Greenwich. He was promoted to Lieutenant on the 15th October 1924 and was a Lieutenant Commander on the destroyer HMS Walker in 1934. He retired from Naval Service in 1935. He was later reappointed into the RN Signals department in 1938 where he earned the Silver Oak Leaves of a Commander before retiring in 1942 and going into the Naval Intelligence Division.

After the Second World War and subsequent demobilisation, Loehnis joined GCHQ, at that time a semi-covert division of the Foreign Office. He was appointed Deputy to Sir Eric Jones in 1954 and went on to become Director of GCHQ from 1960 until 1964, and was knighted in 1962.
He retired to Belgravia where he died in May 1992.