Greg Pytel (GP) returns, asking me to post a comment to my post below, which of course I have done. His further observations are interesting. I do not think it was fair to put up a running commentary (Especially as you well know that all I really wanted was to put […]
Derek Tonkin makes plenty more smart points in emails to me which he is pleased to see made available to a wider audience (edited and reorganised slightly by me for this format). See especially his wise concluding sentence. Thus: Sanctions In 1999 the UK Government completed a general study of […]
My mind turns to Myanmar/Burma (Burma hereinafter, as it’s shorter). A faraway country of which I know nothing. Burma is larger than Ukraine in geographical terms and (with some 50 million people) than Spain in population terms. So comfortably towards the top of global country rankings on both counts. But […]
Fame, at last. My already legendary Barnacles piece makes it to the Browser. Hurrah. This is how they list it: Scenes from the diplomatic life, worthy of Lawrence Durrell. Embassies, like ships, have their barnacles: The local bores, gatecrashers, frauds and eccentrics "who attach themselves to the Corps and intend to […]
You are probably wondering what is my finest piece of writing about diplomatic life. I ask myself that question. The answer is here. A description for DIPLOMAT magazine of the astonishing sub-culture of Diplomatic Barnacles, those primitive life-forms that cling tenaciously to the local Diplomatic Corps and can never be […]
Here is another DIPLOMAT piece, this time on ‘transitions’ from communism in Europe: Back in the mid-1980s I was the Foreign Office speechwriter working for Sir Geoffrey Howe. Exciting times. Mikhail Gorbachev was leading the Soviet Union in what looked like a strongly positive new direction. In Poland the Solidarity […]
You no doubt are wondering what has been happening to my articles for DIPLOMAT. The answer is that their website has been having some issues, so I am behind at linking to them. But here is my latest, a timely little number on Intelligent Euroscepticism: Broadly speaking, the idea of […]
Here is a YouTube conversation between me and Jennifer Hardie (CEO of Pinnacle Dubai) in which I discuss in general terms the Negotiation Skills course I completed with Pinnacle last week. The general idea is that you should see this magnificent training for what it is (namely magnificent) and sign […]
In a result unexpected by me at least (I am not following Serbia’s goings-on too closely these days, and the polls suggested that Tadic would win again) Tomislav Nikolic as leader of the Serbian Progressive Party has won Serbia’s Presidential Elections today by a clear nose, ousting former President Boris […]
I have never in these pages given you an (almost) full account of the expulsion from Moscow of a number of British diplomats back in May 1996 for – the Russians said – spying. This was the first major spy row between Moscow and a ‘Western’ country following the end […]
