I am struck by the solid number of people coming to this site via my Diplomatic Oral History transcript here. Welcome.

There is a lot of good vivid stuff there if anyone really does want a Lot More about some of the most memorable moments in my diplomatic career:

In Bosnia after Dayton they didn’t shoot at each other but war continued by other means. Whenever we think about the UK we all recognise the Queen as a national symbol. We recognise Manchester United. We recognise Nelson’s Column. We recognise Stratford upon Avon. It doesn’t stop. Charles Dickens. There are symbols which, for better or worse, bind us together.

Whereas in Bosnia everything was contested, at least by the political leaders. They wrangled over everything – the symbolism of the colour of the money. There was nothing in Bosnia that the three different communities agreed on. There wasn’t a common writer; there wasn’t a common colour; there wasn’t a common book; there wasn’t a common football team.

One day the three members of the newly elected Presidency sat down to have a meeting round a round table, about six feet across. They spent three hours arguing about the seating arrangements. Should they sit in an isosceles triangle formation, an equilateral triangle or a scalene triangle? Eventually they just sat down and started talking, but this was the sort of madness we had to endure.

Or this on Yeltsin:

Everyone sniggers at him now but Yeltsin brought Russia freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of travel, freedom to set up a business, freedom of speech; every freedom that we still think counts for anything, he gave Russia. Amazing burst of enthusiasm.

When we went there, there was nothing in the city, hardly any food. By the time we left there was a big fat "yellow pages". We wanted a firework display for Guy Fawkes Night so we looked in the "yellow pages" and some young guy turned up with a load of free samples and a video of his fireworks display and we hired him. Brilliant.

After all that Marxist rubbish of scientific socialism, we saw scientific capitalism in operation. It was really remarkable…