The latest issue of DIPLOMAT carries my droll article on diplomatic leaks down the ages.

Written before the recent Damian Green MP drama here in Parliament. But perhaps none the worse for that.

Has that much changed since Rome in 1870? Thus:

One of the USA’s most brilliant Ambassadors, George Perkins Marsh, is dressing for dinner with senior Italians. His servant enters, carrying a newspaper on a silver tray, an unexpected, quizzical expression perching uneasily on a raised eyebrow.

Ambassador Marsh glances at the paper. He reels.

There, printed for all to see, is his private dispatch to Washington, his robust thoughts on what he saw as the Italian government’s servile attitude towards the Emperor of France: ‘Italy’s future course will be characterised by vacillation, tergiversation and duplicity, as it has always been since 1864’.

One thing has changed for sure.

Diplomatic vocabulary has shrivelled.