See my latest DIPLOMAT article here.

It recalls the amazing battle between the French and Spanish Ambassadors along the streets of London which left twelve people dead;

Samuel Pepys’ diary recorded how London rejoiced at the outcome: ‘indeed we do naturally all love the Spanish and hate the French’.

And this:

Every year in November, the FCO holds a ceremony at the Main Staircase for colleagues who have died in active service. One of the names engraved on the wall is that of Charles Morpeth, a young British diplomat who died in a helicopter crash on a remote mountainside in Bosnia in on 17 September 1997: senior German, French and Polish colleagues from the Office of the High Representative were also lost.

I was then Ambassador to Sarajevo. Perhaps the hardest thing I had to do in my whole diplomatic career was to read out a tribute to Charles at a packed memorial service in Sarajevo cathedral, with his parents and wife Helen sitting in the congregation.

My message then applies to all diplomats as they set out on peacekeeping missions: ‘Any of us could have been in that helicopter. Any of us could be in the next one.’