Just say that you work for a major media outlet. But you are not a nice person. So you send send a website you do not like a message via the site’s Contact facility: I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut…. But you do not […]
Just say that you work for a major media outlet. But you are not a nice person. So you send send a website you do not like a message via the site’s Contact facility: I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut…. But you do not […]
My observations on Power and Purpose attracted this interesting thought from someone in the Mini containing my ever-growing army of readers, himself once closely involved in British government sharp-end business: It always struck me that the FCO was truly excellent when faced with a bad situation. They could be relied […]
How to assess the life and works of Fidel Castro? CNN has the line. Castro was a not too bad fellow who did good things for ‘social reform’ in Cuba and who was praised in some circles for standing up to the United States. Oh, and he was criticized for […]
One of the great words of our time is the Balkan/Turkish word ‘inat’. Most ‘Western’ diplomats and politicians dealing with the Balkans of course have never heard of it, even though those who know the region well regularly remind us of the force of inat Serb-style. Thus here. And here. […]
On the subject of football and diplomacy, in 1984 the then British Ambassador to communist Yugoslavia and I as Embassy First Secretary went to see Croatia’s Hajduk Split team play Tottenham in a UEFA Cup first-leg game. At half-time Spurs were leading 1-0 and going well, Micky Hazard in outstanding form. The […]
A neat way to stump your friends is to ask them how many matches (no replays – penalties decide a drawn game) it takes to have a simple knock-out football competition between four teams with one side winning. "Er," they say, "surely three: two semi-finals get two teams into the […]
The Phaeton-like rise and fall of Bobby Fischer brings back memories of the Cold War. It is hard to describe the surge of utter dominance and confidence which lifted Fischer to his World Chess Championship victory over Boris Spassky in 1972. Imagine (if you can) Tottenham winning the Premiership […]
In March 2007 it was drawn to my attention that the authors of a new book The Albanian Question – Reshaping the Balkans had said some most disobliging things about … me! Thus I had been described as “ … a fanatical Yugophile, who had been a member of […]
