We cherish the idea that we clever Westerners have something called ‘freedom of the press’. But what exactly does that expression mean? Does it mean that those who constitute the body of publishing folk who define themselves as ‘the press’ have special status and associated freedoms which may or may […]
Not sure if I have linked here to my LSE book review about electronic voting, so here it is. Thus: The heart of the book is the authors’ emphasis on sensible risk analysis. Above all, they punch on the nose the odious “precautionary principle” – the superficially appealing but in fact […]
This appears to be a well-sourced Telegraph piece revealing that the FCO has instructed Embassies to start making contingency plans for a Eurozone crash. If so, it’s startling. Startling! Partly because our much-diminished Embassies across the EU – cheerily cut back by Labour and this Coalition government alike to redeploy diplomats […]
Last week I attended the annual FCO remembrance ceremony held in November each year to honour FCO diplomats and colleagues who have been killed while on duty. I try to attend each year, as my friend and colleague Charles Morpeth was killed in a helicopter crash in Bosnia in 1997 […]
Yesterday my Sunday was interrupted by a request from RT-TV (Russia’s answer to the BBC’s world broadcasts) to take part in a programme talking about the Eurozone in general and Italy in particular. As they asked nicely and as it was not too far to the BBC Oxford studio where the […]
Readers here know all about MTS and non-MTS. It seemed a good idea to explain the idea to Telegraph Blog readers. Done here, with a nice stormy seas picture: Hence the core diplomatic policy conundrum: over what timescale is success measured? One of the metaphors I deployed to explain Bosnia’s […]
Most people are bewildered by what is going on in Greece. So am I. But here is a wily view from everyone’s favourite Serb Paleocon, Srdja Trifkovic, who explains how the whole manoeuvre looks like a quirky judo move to floor the opposition and so end up making the whole […]
Here is a handy one-stop-shop for most of my articles for DIPLOMAT magazine. It includes a link to my latest piece on Diplomatic Drafting and Wikileaks: When I was Ambassador in Poland, the FCO published a fat volume of diplomatic despatches from the 1950s and 1960s, so I could see […]
Most readers of this website are interested in one way or another in ‘foreign affairs’. As I have described on different occasions here, the heart of international diplomacy is the state. That idea in its modern form emerged from the Peace of Westphalia. Here are some passages from my 2009 […]
I thought I’d treat myself for Christmas and get one of these fine watches from Christopher Ward. Tragedy! It arrived but was just too big for my, ahem, delicate wrist. I promptly repacked the box and sent it back. They are promptly refunding both the cost of the watch and the […]
