Clarke joined the Diplomatic Service in 1925. He served at Budapest, Warsaw, Constantinople, Geneva and Tokyo. He was Minister at Lisbon 1944–46 and at Paris 1946–49 under the ambassadors Duff Cooper and Sir Oliver Harvey. From 1949 to 1953 he served at the Foreign Office as assistant Under-Secretary, then deputy Under-Secretary. He was officially present at the funeral of King George VI at Windsor in February 1952. In 1953, he received his last appointment as Ambassador to Italy where he remained for nine years, an unusually long period.
Later career
Clarke retired from the Diplomatic Service in 1962 and devoted himself to numerous cultural and artistic activities. He was chairman of the and of the Royal Academy of Dancing, a governor of the BBC and of the British Institute of Recorded Sound, and served many other organisations. In 1967, however, he dedicated himself to Venice after the serious flooding in November 1966. He and others founded the Italian Art and Archives Rescue Fund which in 1971 became the Venice in Peril Fund of which Clarke was vice-chairman 1970–83 and president 1983–94. He was secretary-general of Europa Nostra 1969–70.
Clarke was twice married. His first marriage was to an American, Virginia Bell, in 1937. Her father was an American diplomat and her maternal grandfather was the British Brigadier General Sir Herbert Conyers Surtees. Her older sister Evangeline, was married to David K. E. Bruce, the U.S. Ambassador to France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the United Kingdom. Virginia and Ashley divorced in 1960. In 1962 he married Frances Molyneux, daughter of John Molyneux of Stourbridge, Worcestershire, Clarke's birthplace. There were no children of either marriage. Lady Clarke was co-founder, vice-chairman, and later co-president, of the Venice in Peril Fund. She was awarded the OBE in 1984 and raised to CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 2000 – she was invested with the latter award in Rome during the Queen's state visit to Italy in October 2000. She too received the freedom of the city of Venice, in 1996. Clarke died on 20 January 1994. His ashes were taken to Venice and on 26 February were ceremonially carried in a sixteen-oar boat, through thick fog, the length of the Grand Canal and across the lagoon to the funerary island of San Michele, where they were buried in the protestant cemetery.
