Welcome to my page.  My wife, Vanessa, and I arrived in the Kingdom in 2007.  We returned after nearly 9 years with many happy memories. We are renewing our relationship with many of our old Saudi friends and look forward to making many new ones. We will continue to do what we can to strengthen the already strong relationship between the two Kingdoms. Below is a brief description of my career history.

CV - HM Ambassador Sir William Patey KCMG

William Patey CMG was born in Edinburgh in 1953, where he attended Trinity Academy school. He then read Modern History at the University of Dundee from 1971 to 1975.  William joined the Diplomatic Service straight after graduation, and after working on the Rhodesia Desk on entry to the Foreign Office, William went to the FCO's Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies in Lebanon to study Arabic.  After one year he went to Abu Dhabi as Commercial Attache and was then posted to the British Embassy in Tripoli to work in the Political Section.  After a few years in London, where he worked successively on the Libya/Syria Desk and the Iran/Iraq Desk, he was sent to Australia as Head of the Political Section at the British High Commission in Canberra.  Returning to London in 1992 he was appointed Deputy Head of United Nations Department.  He then spent two years as an Overseas Inspector before being posted to Riyadh as Deputy Head of Mission and Consul General from 1995 to 1998. 

On his return to London he was appointed Head of the Middle East Department where he served from 1999 to 2002. In 2002 he was appointed Ambassador to Sudan during the negotiations for a comprehensive peace agreement between the Government of Khartoum and the southern rebels (SPLA).  In June 2005 he was appointed Ambassador to Iraq and served there for 14 months, during the drafting and passing in a referendum of the new Iraqi Constitution.  He left Baghdad at the end of July 2006and until his appointment as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in April 2007 he served as the Director of the Comprehensive Spending Review programme in the Foreign Office.

William and Vanessa Patey married in London in 1978.  They have two sons, William and Thomas.