Hugh Lunghi was born in Tehran [Iran] in 1920, the son of Philip Lunghi, a member of the British legation in Tehran and the Shah's financial adviser. His mother was Anglo-Russian and Lunghi was brought up speaking both Russian and English. After studying Latin and Greek at the University of Oxford, Lunghi joined the army, becoming a major in the Royal Artillery. His fluency in Russian soon brought him into demand as an interpreter, and he joined the British Military Mission to the Soviet Union as aide-de-camp to the Mission's leader, Lieutenant-General Sir Giffard Martel, in 1943. Lunghi also attended the so-called "Big Three" conferences between Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam [Germany], interpreting for the British Chiefs of Staff, and also for Winston Churchill, [Robert] Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin, when the chief interpreter, Major Arthur Birse, was otherwise engaged or resting. While still with the British Military Mission, just before the Potsdam Conference, Lunghi was in Berlin in July 1945, and was one of the first of the British forces to enter Hitler's bunker.

After the war, Lunghi continued to make good use of his language skills, becoming second secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow and serving as chief interpreter at conferences in the Kremlin for the next ten years. He served as conference secretary and interpreter for all the Western Powers in the Berlin Blockade conference at the Kremlin in 1948, and was personal assistant and interpreter to Lord Montgomery of Alamein in his talks with Stalin and the Soviet Chiefs of Staff.

In the later years of his career, Lunghi joined the BBC World Service and became programme organiser for the Czechoslovakian section when Czechoslovakia [Czech Republic and Slovakia] was invaded by Soviet troops in 1968, later becoming assistant head of the BBC's Central European Service. He died on 14 March 2014.