I was taken aback to read tonight of the apparent suicide of Catherine Hurd, wife of Douglas Hurd’s son Tom.

The Hurds and Murrays lived in adjoining identical semi-detached houses while we worked together in the British Embassy in Warsaw – we were both First Secretaries in the Embassy. Frankly, the Hurds were not very interested in people outside their own social milieu. But Catherine had her first child while they lived next door, and seemed an extremely devoted mother. They now have five children of which the youngest must still be very young. I cannot understand the circumstances and causes of this tragedy. For a mother of young children, living a life without the slightest problem in providing for them, to kill herself seems very strange indeed. I feel very sorry for the children.