Rarely has the description "statesman" seemed so appropriate. In his long career, however, Urquhart represented no single state but rather every nation on the globe. During a 41-year career as a senior U.N. official, rising to the rank of Under Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs, Urquhart, 69, found himself in the middle of virtually every major international crisis. Though he retired 2 1/2 years ago, Urquhart will be in the delegation that will travel to Oslo next week to receive the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the U.N. for its peacekeeping missions in Lebanon, Cyprus, Afghanistan and other volatile places. His efforts over many years not only in promoting the usefulness of the blue-helmeted U.N. soldiers but also in directly supervising their operations earned him the nickname "Mr. Peacekeeper." In 1986 Urquhart became a Scholar-in-Residence at the Ford Foundation, where he spoke with staff writer Scott MacLeod.
Q. Your father was an artist, yet you have had a career in diplomacy.
A. I wasn't a diplomat. I was an international civil servant, which is a completely different thing. I don't like the word diplomat, actually. The ordinary person thinks of people in striped pants at a cocktail party or at a green baize table engaging in circumlocutions about serious matters. I was brought up between the wars, in a very dreary period of European history. I had always wanted to work for the League of Nations, but it went out of business before I got into the game.
Q. When the U.N. was formed, you were the second man recruited. Who got you involved?
A. I left the British army in July 1945 and went to work for Arnold Toynbee at the Foreign Office research department. Gladwyn Jebb, now Lord Gladwyn, the Acting Secretary-General, was looking for a private secretary. Toynbee suggested me. I was 26.
Q. Perhaps it's not too widely known that you were the young intelligence officer portrayed in Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far. What led you to advise against the ill-fated British attack on Arnhem, in German-occupied Holland?
A. I had come to the conclusion that at all levels the attack would be totally disastrous. It didn't take a great deal of brains to see that. Airborne troops were going to land 60 miles ahead of the ground troops and take three main bridges over three big rivers. Then the relieving ground troops had to go across the low country. We learned that two of the best Panzer divisions in the German army, the 9th and 10th S.S. Panzer Divisions, were refitting right where the 1st Airborne Division was going to land. I couldn't see the strategic point of the operation.
Q. Did Field Marshal Montgomery get the advice?