The fine diplomatic art of briefing journalists badly. Or "How to be Clever – but not Wise".
The fine diplomatic art of briefing journalists badly. Or "How to be Clever – but not Wise".
I have been busy helping teach young diplomats some of the Darker Arts of diplomacy. Part of the course involved us all filling in a personality profile questionnaire, which purported to show what sort of person we were and how we might respond to problems in terms of the four categories above. My […]
When I was Ambassador in Warsaw people often would ask me, "how many Poles are now in the UK?" Interesting question. Who is a Pole? And what does "in the UK" mean? Crudely speaking there are different categories of Poles now living in the UK. Thus: a small number of […]
Back in the early 1980s as a junior Second Sec Pol/Info at the Embassy in Belgrade I now and then would accompany the then Ambassador Edwin Bolland on his regional visits round the country. Edwin Bolland (later Sir Edwin) was a fascinating if complex senior colleague. On these long tours […]
On the subject of good drafting, this says everything that needs to be said about the Archbishop of Canterbury and today’s Chattering Classes. What a truly fine piece of work.
Not long before the Dayton Peace Conference negotiations started in November 1995, the Contact Group met in Moscow to discuss how it all should go. The European members of the Contact Group decided to have an informal consultation before we met the Americans and then had the full Group meeting […]
Last week I was attempting to train some EU officials in the art of writing impactful political reports. My theory always was that if one’s work from Post was to be actually read by someone somewhere ploughing dispiritedly through the mass of dull stuff on an official desk or in an official […]
The modern FCO like other British government departments is awash with ever-changing objectives/targets/priorities/strategies/goals, or whatever new jargon word they plan to seize on. In some deep sense a Plot has been Lost – such protean schemes show a striking inability to cope systematically with reality. Regardless of what the latest dizzy […]
Back in 1979 when I joined the Service the FCO effectively enjoyed a brilliant and droll monopoly over most of Whitehall for communicating quickly with foreign governments. If eg the Trade Department wanted to send a message to its opposite numbers in Japan, this is roughly what would happen: […]
After returning from Zagreb I hit the Eurostar to Brussels to join for the first time as a trainer a good CPDS training course aimed at improving the quality of political reporting and analysis produced by EU officials. In one exercise the participants had to draft an urgent short report about the implications of […]
