I have emerged from my various Public Speaking sessions with different United Nations colleagues, Only to be plunged into a new venture: an online course on Diplomatic Protocol and Etiquette. Today’s principles of diplomatic protocol including the idea of diplomatic immunity itself trace back over 2000 years. The core principle […]
Here is my look at the speech at the 2005 Auschwitz commemoration by Vladimir Putin: I was there as British Ambassador to Poland, standing behind the rows of world leaders. It was dark and cold: a painful minus 8 degrees C. We lucky lesser VIPs at the back could move around […]
Very sad news this morning. Jozef Oleksy, one of Poland’s smartest politicians, has died. Oleksy (see a Wikipedia summary here) was one of those smart former communists (he was for a while a secret informer for Poland’s communist military intelligence) who smoothly made the transition to European social democracy after […]
At last. My new ebook Speechwriting for Leaders is out. Hurrah. General blurb and a link for international readers here. UK folk can (and must) buy it through Amazon here. Meanwhile over in Poland – as if by magic – a vivid row has erupted over the fact that I […]
On the subject of the media, HM Government made a serious effort to crank up positive publicity for the visit to London of Poland’s President Kwasniewski on a State Visit after Poland joined the European Union in 2004. The visit featured a fun photo-shoot swing by the London football ground where […]
I haven’t ever published here before the full text of my legendary Chinese Alarm-Clock email about the then EU Budget negotiations that was leaked in late 2005 by someone senior (in the Treasury?) to the Sunday Times and caused a vast furore in Poland. It was a spoof speaking note […]
My latest piece for DIPLOMAT wonders what happens when international borders start to melt: … some people think that borders are less and less important. This in turn seems to signify politically (or even morally) that within the European Union so-called nation states are less and less important. As perhaps […]
At last this spectacular new museum in Warsaw is fully open and buzzing. So many sites in Poland recall how Poland’s Jewish community died. Now this one recalls how they lived. Here is a good piece from Timothy Garton Ash: “Mir zaynen do!” (“We are here!”) The defiant Yiddish refrain […]
In dismal times like this one’s mind invariably goes back to James Thurber, the wonderful mid-C20 American cartoonist and humorist (sic). Here he is describing an unusually dim but extra burly Polish-American student grappling to answer a VERY simple question: One day when we were on the subject of transportation […]
My latest Telegraph piece on Ukraine is up on the DT website: Russia’s “principled demands” are unchanged: that Ukraine stay independent of all “blocs”; that eastern areas of Ukraine get radical autonomy allowing them to have special economic relations with Russia; and that Ukraine kisses goodbye to Crimea. A settlement […]
