As a graduate trainee in an old-established City finance house, Grahame was groomed in all aspects of the procurement, financing, shipping, merchanting and selling of a wide range of goods – basic training for international trade. He was then appointed a manager in a finance company within the group and went on to became one of the first UK specialists in equipment leasing.

He later joined merchant bankers, Arbuthnot Latham and Co.Ltd., and became deeply involved with international trade and project finance through which he gained extensive knowledge of many overseas countries. Following the takeover of Arbuthnot Latham in1982, he set up a consultancy, Archibald Grahame (Services) Limited, to specialise in giving advice on funding and to provide politico-economic intelligence relating to major projects in developing countries. Clients included the European Commission, UNIDO, other multinational organisations, overseas governments and major companies

Simultaneously, he was Advisor on Far East Affairs to The Royal Bank of Scotland, from 1982 until 2002, and also, from 1982 to 1988, a member and/or Chairman of SEATAG (South East Asia Trade Advisory Group) of the British Overseas Trade Board. In 1982, with an Indonesian friend, he set up and co-chaired The Anglo-Indonesian Joint Working Party on Economic Collaboration, which became a leader in North-South commercial collaboration. Widely copied, it played a useful role in the development of the Global Village.

He was a member of the board of The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry from 1992 to 1994 and from 1996 to 2002.

As Chief Executive of the National Council for Vocational Qualifications from1990 to 1997 he was responsible for the development and introduction of NVQs and GNVQs. 

He spent many years in the glass, steel and tobacco industries working in production and HR management. He is now Chairman of International Training Services Ltd and a non-executive director of EMTA Awards Ltd and Glass Training Ltd. 

He is also Managing Director of FHP Consulting whose clients include the UK Government, Awarding Bodies, Sector Skills Councils, Overseas Governments and Multi-National Companies.

His banking career began when he joined Midland Bank. After Branch banking experience and a spell in Human Resources he was transferred to the international division of the bank, where he was involved with lending to banks and companies in Europe before being seconded for three years to European American Bank in New York (1979-1982), a consortium bank owned by six European banks, where he worked with UK companies investing in the United States.

On returning to the UK he was engaged with the European headquarters of US companies, particularly in Brussels and Amsterdam, before moving to manage Midland Bank’s trade finance teams across the Midlands and north of England (1984-1987) and the international operations centre which supported them.

A change of role meant he was responsible for corporate banking in four counties in the East Midlands of England (1987-1990) before he left Midland Bank after 26 years. He joined TSB Bank as Commercial Director and Executive Director of the retail bank with responsibilities for activity with the business community which included chairing the bank’s senior credit committee. He became a Director of a subsidiary, Hill Samuel Bank (1991-1994), before reverting to TSB, managing commercial banking business in London and the south east of England (1994-1996). When TSB and Lloyds merged he managed their teams operating in the SME market in London (1997-2000).

Following his retirement from banking, he has retained an involvement in the business community through non-executive roles, which at different times have included board membership of West Midlands Chambers of Commerce (2004-2006) and Business Link Staffordshire (2004-2006), and other advisory work. He is non-executive Chairman of Conder Structures Limited, which was voted UK Specialist Steel Company of the Year in 2008.

He was a member of the board of The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry from 1997 to 1999.

He spent 38 years as a commercial banker, working in lending, debt workout and strategic business unit management. He started his career with Standard Chartered Bank, moving to Barclays in the late 1970s. He took early retirement from there in 2001 and joined The Charity Bank in 2002 as Deputy Chief Executive, where he was responsible for control functions and from which he retired in 2007.

He chairs the board at social care provider, Heritage Care, which looks after the elderly, people with learning difficulties and those suffering mental ill health. 

He maintains an interest in finance through his voluntary non-executive directorship at Foundation East, a community development finance organisation, covering the East of England.

He is Head of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film at Queen Mary, University of London and Founding Director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations. Between 1999 and 2004 he was Director of The Institute of Germanic Studies and founded the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature. Presently, his main research areas comprise representations of science and music in the German language literatures (from the late 18th century to the present day), poetic theory at the turn of the centuries, the literary aesthetics of repetition and the conception of pluralectics in German (Late) Romanticism. 

He is a member of the European research group on Borders and Boundaries in literary discourses since 1800 and is a founding member of the “Klassik Kolleg” in cooperation with the Klassik Stiftung Weimar together with the German Departments of the Universität Heidelberg and the Università di Roma Tor Vergata. He is a Visiting Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Visiting Professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, and a member of various advisory boards (of cultural institutions, publishing houses and academic journals). As a literary critic he writes for some of the leading journals in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, including Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Tagesspiegel, Die Presse and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 

From the same date he was also Finance Director and Company Secretary of The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry until retiring as Finance Director in 2008. 

Having qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Moore Stephens & Co., in 1973 he joined Rea Brothers, the listed private banking group, becoming Group Secretary (with wide financial responsibilities), an Assistant Director of the bank and a Director of the Group’s Lloyd’s broking and travel agency subsidiaries. Simultaneously he was Finance Director and Secretary of Stocklake Holdings PLC, a listed international trading group closely associated with the bank with interests in steel stockholding (in Africa), export management, confirming and financing, textile manufacturing and merchanting, the import into the United Kingdom of hardwood and agricultural machinery (the latter from former Eastern bloc countries), property development and the import of Czech shoes into Canada.   

He studied at La Sorbonne, Paris and the Universität Heidelberg. He is a member of the Court of The Clothworkers’ Company and a former Trustee of The Clothworkers’ Foundation.