Michael Franklin was a good man to have in an emergency. When at various stages in budget renegotiations with the European Economic Community (EEC) Margaret Thatcher grew incensed, it was Franklin who calmed her. When the Chernobyl disaster struck in 1986, contaminating food across Europe, it was Franklin who skilfully steered deadlocked member states, along with various "barmy" British representatives (and a particularly stubborn Germany), to a trade solution.

The quintessential civil servant, urbane and understated, Franklin was of a generation that had seen Europe at war and wanted to help to keep it at peace. His entire career was spent in the civil service, where he played an important part in negotiations that led to Britain joining the EEC, which later became the European Union.

Michael David Milroy Franklin was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, in 1927, the son of Milroy Franklin, an accountant, and his wife, Mabel (nee Andrews), who also had a daughter, Mary. His parents saved up and sent him to board at Taunton School.

After National Service in the Royal Horse Artillery, Franklin went to Cambridge in 1948 to read economics. He had been an indifferent pupil at Taunton, but at Cambridge he flourished. Influenced particularly by...