Remembering Owen Harries

Owen Harries, a proud Welsh Australian, was laid to rest yesterday in the brilliant sunshine of Macquarie Park in Sydney, where he had emigrated from what he felt was a tired and lackluster Britain in the 1950s, to become in succession a much-admired university teacher, an adviser who crafted an enduring foreign-policy strategy for successive Australian governments, his new country’s ambassador to UNESCO in Paris, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who guided the United States and Britain out of a United Nations agency he had found to be corrupt and anti-Western, a founding editor of The National Interest magazine, and overall an extraordinarily influential observer and critic of international affairs in the early post–Cold War years.

It’s a remarkable immigrant success story in its variety and distinction. And it was reflected yesterday in the funeral tributes to Owen, read by his daughters Grace and Rowena, from leading figures in politics, diplomacy, and scholarship from all over the world. Here is a small sample of them:

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

Owen Harries, a proud Welsh Australian, was laid to rest yesterday in the brilliant sunshine of Macquarie Park in Sydney, where he had emigrated from what he felt was a tired and lackluster Britain in the 1950s, to become in succession a much-admired university teacher, an adviser who crafted an enduring foreign-policy strategy for successive Australian governments, his new country’s ambassador to UNESCO in Paris, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who guided the United States and Britain out of a United Nations agency he had found to be corrupt and anti-Western, a founding editor of The National Interest magazine, and overall an extraordinarily influential observer and critic of international affairs in the early post–Cold War years.

It’s a remarkable immigrant success story in its variety and distinction. And it was reflected yesterday in the funeral tributes to Owen, read by his daughters Grace and Rowena, from leading figures in politics, diplomacy, and scholarship from all over the world. Here is a small sample of them: