Short answers, pulled from the story.
John Loader Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby (the 1st of July 1877 - the 20th of April 1969), was a British civil servant and diplomat who served as the United Kingdom Representative to Eire from 1939 to 1949. He was a key figure in Anglo-Irish relations during the Second World War, mediating between Winston Churchill and Eamon de Valera during Ireland's wartime neutrality.
Britain refused to appoint an ambassador or minister because either title would imply Ireland was a foreign country outside the Commonwealth. Ireland refused a High Commissioner because that implied Commonwealth membership. The compromise title "United Kingdom Representative to Eire" was agreed upon, with de Valera insisting the preposition be "to" rather than "in" to assert Irish sovereignty. Maffey was formally appointed on the 3rd of October 1939.
In "The Irish Question in 1945", addressed to the Secretary of State for the Dominions, Maffey described Ireland as "more than ever a foreign country" that was "so dominated by the National Catholic Church as to be almost a theocratic State". He wrote that anti-British feeling was fostered in schools, Church, and State through what he called "a system of hereditary enemy indoctrination".
Maffey entered the Indian Civil Service in 1899. He served as Assistant Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province from 1912 to 1916, then as Private Secretary to the Viceroy of India Lord Chelmsford from 1916 to 1920, and finally as Chief Commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province from 1921 to 1924. He resigned from the Indian Civil Service in 1924 after a disagreement with the British government.
Maffey described de Valera as personally in favour of democracy's survival but distrustful of British intentions toward Ireland. In his 1945 memorandum he wrote that de Valera was trusted for his "austerity and his cold mathematical approach to Anglo-Irish problems" and that "there is very little of the Irishman in Mr. de Valera". Maffey also noted that de Valera was not himself a hater of England, distinguishing him from other figures in the Irish government.
Maffey was raised to the peerage as Baron Rugby, of Rugby in the County of Warwick, in February 1947. He married Dorothy Gladys Huggins on the 28th of August 1907 and they had three children: Alan, Henry, and Penelope. His daughter Penelope became the mother of Conservative politician Jonathan Aitken and actress Maria Aitken; her grandchildren include actor Jack Davenport.