The decision by the Catholic Church to create a formula to allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church but keep some of their Anglican persona is a stunner. Above all, because it represents the latest move in a Great Negotiation which has proceeded for some 500 years as between Rome […]
The BBC is running a radio series on FCO Valedictory Despatches, a now lost art-form in which Ambassadors gave Whitehall the benefit of their Views on leaving a post and/or leaving the Foreign Service altogether. One of my first postings on this site described my successful late-night lunge to suppress freedom […]
Reader Ken Buxton writes to point out the elegant writing and political prescience of Lawrence Durrell, author of the Alexandria Quartet. I had a shot at that massive work years ago and reeled away defeated. But I recall a stunning, lyrical description of an early morning duck-shooting expedition. The reader […]
A great diplomatic flurrying around the latest vote by the UN Human Rights Council in effect condemning Israel. The resolution passed seems to be this one. The resolution welcomed the earlier Goldstone report which condemned human rights abuses by Israel and Hamas alike. But it also contained a long list of condemnations […]
The latest developments on the Torture issue – the speech by MI5 chief Jonathan Evans and then the High Court decision in favour of release of secret US material concerning Binyam Mohamed – are (in their different ways) further important steps towards clarifying how if at all we deal with […]
This is a fascinating account of Thomas Jefferson’s time in Paris as an early US diplomat before the French Revolution: an article written in 1872. Many striking points of interest and insight. Such as Benjamin Franklin’s view of Diplomacy: Benjamin Franklin’s excellence being, that he conducted the intercourse of nationson […]
Remember the hard wrangling on how the so-called new EU Embassies would be set up under the Lisbon Treaty and its External Action Service? No you don’t. So look here. Some very important issues at stake here, namely who ultimately gives the orders to these missions. Is it the EU […]
This time a curious and very unastonishing piece in the Spectator by Martin Bright, which uses as some vital evidence Craig Murray’s long-lost fleeting relationship with Kaminski in the mid-1990s. I have posted a comment suggesting that media bunnies might like to ask David Miliband three questions: did No 10 […]
Reader Norman Fraser (not clear to me which of the many NFs out there) writes: I am amazed at how intellectually short-winded most of your posts are. I deduce from the tone and context he does not mean this as a compliment. Although would being intellectually long-winded be much better? I […]
Off to Paris tomorrow to give a presentation to a distinguished group of people about Diplomacy. Meandering around the Internet for inspiration I started looking at the fine story of one of the greatest ever Ambassadors, Thomas Jefferson, who represented the newly emerging USA in Paris in the years leading […]
