Barbara Woodward

In 2015, in a conversation with Lucy D'Orsi, HM Queen Elizabeth II said that Chinese officials "were very rude to the ambassador" (referring to Woodward), during an event at Lancaster House, London.

Woodward joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1994. She has worked in China, Russia, the EU, and at the UN. From 2003 to 2009 she worked in Beijing, first as a Political Counsellor, then across the whole UK-China relationship as Deputy Head of Mission, including during the Olympics. Prior to her current posting, Woodward was Director General for Economic & Consular Affairs.

Woodward was then admitted to St Andrew's University in Scotland in 1979 and read history. She graduated in 1983 with a Master of Arts (MA Hons) degree. Woodward taught English, first at Nankai University, and then at Hubei University, in Wuhan, China between 1986 and 1988. She later learned and mastered Chinese. Her teacher in London, gave her the Chinese name Wu Baina (吴百纳 Wú Bǎinà). In 1988, she went on to Yale University in the United States to further her studies on international relations, and obtained a second MA degree.

Dame Barbara Janet Woodward DCMG OBE (Chinese: 吴百纳 , born 29 May 1961) is a British diplomat and China expert. She has served as the British Ambassador to China since February 2015, and is the first woman to hold this position.

Barbara Janet Woodward was born to Arthur Claude Woodward (1921–1992) and Rosemary Monica Gabrielle Fenton in Gipping, Suffolk, United Kingdom on 29 May 1961. Woodwards's father served in World War II as an officer of the Suffolk Regiment, and won the Military Cross for gallantry. He was later elected Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS) after the war. She was educated at St Felix School, a co-eduational, boarding independent school in Southwold, Suffolk.