Diligent readers will remember that now and then I argue with Brian Barder, another former Ambassador turned energetic contrarian. The Assange Saga in its early days gave one such exchange, where we disagreed over how far if at all the UK government might be within its rights to enter the […]
Does the Foreign Office discriminate against women diplomats, as evidenced by the fact that there has never been a woman Ambassador to Washington or Paris or the UN or EU? No. My latest piece at Telegraph Comment explains what is going on: Some 15-20 new “fast-stream” diplomats (those deemed capable […]
One of the sharpest knives in the British Embassy in Moscow in the early 1990s was Christopher Granville. He was the first-ever UK diplomat to resign from the FCO to set up a new financial business in Russia. After various adventures he now is a leading member of the team at Trusted […]
I have finished a more or less first full draft for my first book (an e-book in fact) provisionally called Speechwriting for Leaders. The idea is to do something that few if any other speechwriting and public speaking books have done, and look at speechwriting from three angles, where the […]
One reader approves of my Warsi letter piece for the Telegraph: Thank you for your excellent piece on Baroness Warsi’s resignation letter. It is profoundly depressing to find such poor literacy and reasoning skills in anyone, let alone a senior government minister. What the country needs is government that is […]
My piece at Telegraph Comment on Baroness Warsi’s resignation letter prompts two broad flows of e-comment: you are mad/petty/vindictive/sexist/racist/generally revolting for criticising her grammar when people in Gaza are dying well said – she showed (again) what poor judgement she has The point that I might have emphasised more clearly is […]
It turns out that there is a healthy market out there for me whispering into your ears. In that spirit, here is my podcast for the FCO describing how the Foreign Office operated in the years before World War One started. Many surprising facts in it about the tiny elite […]
Here is my piece at Telegraph Blogs looking at the resignation letter of Baroness Warsi who left the government today because of UK policy on Gaza: … our approach and language during the current crisis in Gaza is morally indefensible, is not in Britain’s national interest and will have a […]
A short sharp piece from former US top diplomat Christopher Hill on the problems besetting the borders of many Arab states: In a region where crises seem to be the norm, the Middle East’s latest cycle of violence suggests that something bigger is afoot: the beginning of the dissolution of […]
Non-diplomatic folk may not know the different levels of visit for national leaders. These include Private: the leader visits another country for a family holiday (and may or may not have an affable pre-arranged lunch or other meetings with that country’s leader while there). Then there is Official (or Working): a […]
