Sir David Geoffrey Manning, (born 5 December 1949) is a former British diplomat, who was the British Ambassador to the United States from 2003 to 2007. He authored the so-called "Manning Memo", that summarized the details of a meeting between American president George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Until 2019, he was appointed to the Household of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Life and career Manning was educated at Ardingly College and went on to study at Oriel College, Oxford, and at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University. He began his career as a civil servant in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1972. He has served in UK Embassies in Warsaw, New Delhi, Paris, and Moscow, and within the FCO he has worked on the Central American desk, the Russian desk and held several senior positions. He has represented the UK in Brussels and also at the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia in 1994. Between 1995 and 1998, he was British Ambassador to Israel; from 2001, he was a foreign policy adviser to British prime minister Tony Blair. During this time he developed a close relationship with his counterpart, then US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Blair selected him to replace Christopher Meyer as the British Ambassador to the United States. Manning took up the post in 2003. Ambassador Manning visited numerous states, as well as the US territory of Puerto Rico, during his term as Ambassador to the United States and was instrumental in planning Queen Elizabeth's most recent visit. 2003 Iraq War In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush met with Tony Blair. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on 31 January 2003, Bush made it clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he, Bush, was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, stated a confidential memo about the meeting written by Manning and reviewed by The New York Times. At their meeting, Bush and Blair candidly expressed their doubts that chemical, biological or nuclear weapons would be found