The former MI6 spy will loathe being dragged from the shadows of diplomacy and business, an environment where he has thrived, into the burning bright lights of the political stage.
Sir Mark Allen, an acknowledged authority on falconry, a devout Roman Catholic and for so long one of the Arabists on whom the Foreign and Commonwealth Office relied, has managed to avoid publicity for most of his career.
But his influence has often been felt, if not seen, in relations with Libya, a country where his contacts are said to be “second to none”.
Sir Mark is credited with bringing Colonel Gaddafi in from the cold in 2003 when he negotiated the surrender of Libya’s weapons of mass destruction. That triumph of British intelligence was, however, swiftly overshadowed by the furore over the Iraq dossier.
It is said that Sir Mark quit the service “in high dudgeon” because of what he saw as the misuse of intelligence and went to work for BP, where he introduced its chief executive to the Libyan regime.
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Even then, he was still ironing out wrinkles standing in the way of Libya’s re-entry to the civilised world and the lucrative commercial deals that follow. In 2007 he helped to broker the release of Bulgarian nurses imprisoned by Libya on charges of having injected the HIV virus into children. Did he perform such a role in the name of diplomacy or business? The difference, particularly for him, is unclear.