Over at DIPLOMAT magazine is my latest piece on the highs and lows of diplomatic public speaking.

See this excellent example when Queen Elizabeth I chastised the new Polish Ambassador – in fluent Latin:

The first speech any Ambassador makes in her/his own right is the formal address to the Head of State in presenting his or her credentials. Tone is everything. The Head of State will be alert to any nuance suggesting that the new Ambassador represents a national leadership unhappy with the state of bilateral relations.

A fascinating early example of messing this up was given by the youthful Duke of Finland when he arrived as the new Ambassador from the King of Poland to the Court of Queen Elizabeth I. The Ambassador used the occasion to express the unhappiness of the King of Poland at disruption to Poland’s trade caused by disputes between Queen Elizabeth and the King of Spain.

The Queen responded angrily in fluent Latin, saying that the Ambassador did not know what he was talking about:

‘How I have been deceived! I was expecting a diplomatic mission, but you have brought me a quarrel! … Never in my life have I heard such audacity. I marvel, indeed I marvel at so great and such unprecedented impertinence in public.’

It’s just so easy to upset people:

… attempts at diplomatic informality – and especially humour – can backfire. In a speech in 2009, Deborah Jones, US Ambassador to Kuwait, picked up a local joke referring to some women members of the Kuwaiti parliament as ‘cats’. The Ambassador suggested that if women MPs were cats, maybe male MPs were dogs. This was not, ahem, well received.

Plenty of other notable examples, including from my own time as Sir Geoffrey Howe’s FCO speechwriter in the mid-1980s.