Lord Lovat was a stalwart of the Inverness Highland aristocracy. In 1942 he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of the county, and two years later a JP. Lord Lovat made a full recovery from the severe wounds he had received in France but was unable to return to the army (he transferred to the reserve in 1949). In early 1945 Churchill sent him to Moscow as his envoy in a Parliamentary delegation to pay his respect to Stalin and the Presidium. Churchill notes in the final volume of his biography of the Second World War that at the crucial meeting with Stalin and President Roosevelt at Yalta in 1945 when the boundaries of Europe were being discussed Stalin kept coming back again and again, in conversation, to military questions: Stalin said he had acquired a new interest in life, says Churchill, an interest in military affairs. "He liked young military fighters like Lord Lovat". ref: WC: the Second World War,volume VI, page 344 Yalta finale. Winston Churchill requested that he become Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms in the House of Lords; however, Lord Lovat declined the offer and in 1945 joined the Government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, "becoming responsible for the functions of the Ministry of Economic Warfare when these were taken over by the Foreign Office", resigning upon Winston Churchill's election defeat. In 1946 he was made a Commander of the Venerable Order of Saint John. His formal retirement from the army came on 16 June 1962, he retained the honorary rank of brigadier.