The Vatican is influential and well informed, a first-class listening post in which all other G8 countries have resident diplomats.Educated at Marlborough and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he read Modern History, Heath did his military service sweeping mines after the Second World War, following in his family's naval tradition, then entered the Foreign Office in 1950. His first overseas posting was to Djakarta, where it is said his considerable height started a rumour that he was sent to restore Java to colonial status; in fact a less proud and kinder gentle giant would have been hard to imagine.After a spell in Copenhagen and at the Foreign Office he went as First Secretary and Deputy Head of Mission to Sofia, where he caused a stir among his colleagues when the stocky Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, looked up at him and said he'd make a fine Communist. The status of that post is now under threat, with an announcement in July from London that the ambassador's residence and office will be "closed", the post "downsized" and relocated to the British Embassy to Italy. Writing to The Times, three of Heath's successors as ambassador deplored this as "cheese-paring in the extreme". The timing, they said, was particularly unfortunate:Pope Benedict XVI shows signs of wanting closer relations with Britain. He also enjoyed good relations with the Anglican Centre in Rome and was later to be chairman of their English Friends.The Heaths (in 1954 he had married Margaret Bragg, daughter of the physicist and crystallographer Sir Lawrence Bragg, the outgoing Director of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge) lived and entertained in the Villa Drusiana by the Porta di San Sebastiano, with beautiful gardens and fine views of the Appian Way - their garden wall was the old city wall of Rome, built in the third century and restored in the fifth.Sir Mark Heath, knighted by the Queen after her visit, became the first British ambassador to the Holy See when, in 1982, his post was upgraded.
(The Vatican City State may be the smallest state in the world, but the Pope, as head of state, governs some one billion Catholics.) Heath's knowledge and personality earned him their respect. Mark Heath was the quintessential diplomat; tall, elegant, unfailingly courteous and able. The highlight of his long career in the Diplomatic Service was as minister, then ambassador, to the Holy See in 1980-85. This was an exciting period, with the first Polish pope, the state visit of the Queen in 1980 (the third state visit to Italy of her reign) and the papal visit to Britain in 1982 - so nearly delayed by the Falklands War. Heath, an Anglican as has been traditional almost since the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, enjoyed full and friendly relations with the Curia, many of them as well versed in worldly affairs as anyone, or better. Despite increasing bouts of ill-health, he continued to write and to research almost to the end. He died in Oxford, surrounded by his family, after a short final illness borne with customary stoicism and good grace.Colin Thompson.
Mark Evelyn Heath, diplomat: born Emsworth, Hampshire 22 May 1927; Head, West African Department, FCO 1975-80, inspector 1978-80; ambassador to Chad 1975-78; minister to the Holy See 1980-82, ambassador 1982-85; CMG 1980; KCVO 1980; Chairman, Friends of the Anglican Centre, Rome 1984-90; Head of Protocol, Hong Kong Government 1985-88; married 1954 Margaret Bragg (two sons, one daughter); died Bath 28 September 2005. He remained a faithful Roman Catholic, though one sensed that his true spiritual home was the Church of the Second Vatican Council, rather than its more recent conservative incarnation. "No," came the reply, "I'm having my mid-morning break."He was an exemplary tutor, giving unstintingly of his time and wisdom, committed to the belief that the tutorial system involved learning through dialogue, not knowledge imparted from on high. One colleague recalls asking him at breakfast if he was making an early start.
