Lord Harlech, Confidant of Kennedy, Dies

SHREWSBURY, England — Lord Harlech, former British ambassador to Washington and confidant and friend of President John F. Kennedy, died Saturday after a car crash, police reported. He was 66.

Harlech was severely injured Friday night when his car collided with another vehicle on a rural road near this west England town, police said. He died early today in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

Police said Harlech, who was British ambassador to Washington from 1961 to 1965, was apparently returning to his family estate at Talsarnau, in north Wales, 60 miles west of here, when the accident happened.

Harlech’s aristocratic family and the Kennedys were linked for decades by marriage and friendship. For a time, he was an escort of Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, after Harlech’s first wife was killed in 1967.

During the 1961 Cuban missile crisis, Harlech conferred daily with the President, reportedly exercising a restraining influence on Kennedy.

Harlech is survived by his second wife, Pamela Colin, former London editor of the American fashion magazine Vogue, whom he married in 1969, and five children. His eldest son, Julian, died in 1974, and the title passes to his younger son, Francis, 32.