Here is the official text of UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s well received speech to senior Republicans in Philadelphia. And, if you want to see how she delivered it, here she is: This speech has had unusual profile. Mrs May is the first foreign leader to meet President Trump at […]
Way back in 2009 I wrote a piece for DIPLOMAT about the lore and logic of expelling diplomats, usually for spying. The Internet has eaten it, but here are some extracts: You know the story. Only too well. Your spouse yells at you for what you have done. Or for […]
Here is a link (££) to my latest Telegraph piece on the Obama expulsion of Russian diplomats. In case (like me!) you can’t access it, some highlights of what I sent them: It’s safe to say that President Obama and his team knew little about Russia before the President visited […]
When I rebooted my website a while back, I took out my 2008 thoughts on Amazon Space and the human and operational limits to Trust. Let’s get it back here. It still reads nicely enough (Wait … huh? What’s a PDA?). The screams of Aleppo are now coming directly into […]
While basking on the sunny South Carolina beaches I took time out to write a piece for National Interest on the death of Fidel Castro and how different world leaders drafted their respective statements: The Castro case is unusually tricky. There’s no denying that he was a person of international […]
Back from our USA summer holiday. While I was away my podcast discussion with turbo-polemicist James Delingpole appeared. Here it is. Or via iTunes. James is good at being beyond provocative. Here is his book Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside haha) attacking all sorts of different […]
Here’s a question. In fact two questions. Do women qua women face specific public speaking problems? And if so, what’s the best way to tackle them? Plenty of people make the case that yes, women DO face public speaking problems/challenges that men don’t face. This piece proclaims itself as offering […]
To understand the bizarre story that follows, you need to know a little about the FCO Grand Staircase. It is, forsooth, Grand. See this. And this. The high Victorian artwork might not pass today’s fine standards for political correctness. But it too is on a magnificent scale. The Foreign Secretary’s […]
Well. As soon as my back is turned in The Hague it all happens. Here is the piece I wrote for PunditWire on the eve of the US presidential elections: Maybe as a former ambassador myself I am over-sensitive when it comes to what our political leaders say when standing […]
Watch Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn refuse to say whether he would abide by one of the UK’s (and one the world’s) key treaty relationships, namely the North Atlantic Treaty that created NATO: The generally understood key idea of the North Atlantic Treaty is that ‘an attack on one is an […]
