Background
He was born in what was then Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia two weeks after the death of his father, Ernest Melville Charles Guest, a Royal Air Force pilot who was killed in action over the English Channel.
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Melville Guest
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Education
He attended Oxford University, where he played cricket for the 1st XI from 1964–1966 and earned a Blue.
Career
In the Varsity Match of 1965, Guest and his fellow batsman Mike Groves were barracked by the crowd for slow scoring, with 15 consecutive maiden overs bowled by the two Cambridge spinners. He was elected President of Vincent"s Club in 1966. He entered the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) in 1966, with a first posting to Tokyo in 1967.
After a tour of duty in Paris, he temporarily left the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and was managing director of Lucas France from 1980 to 1985.
He was then a director of the Channel Tunnel Group before returning to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Tokyo in 1986 as commercial counsellor. His last overseas posting was as political counsellor and consul general in Stockholm.
He returned to the United Kingdom as head of the south pacific department and then head of south east Asia. He left the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to become chief executive of Asia House, during which time he also took the role of executive director of the United Kingdom-of Korea Forum for the Future and of the United Kingdom-Japan 21st Century Group.
He was also the secretary of the United Kingdom-India Round Table.
As of 2005 he is a senior advisor for corporate and external affairs to Imperial College, London. He was appointed Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2007 Queen"s Birthday Honours for services to Britain"s relations with Asia.
