A fine article in Wired describes the huge job now under way to piece together millions of shreds of documents which the Stasi secret police feverishly ripped up as East Germany’s peculiarly grubby and vicious form of Communism abruptly ended. Of course in the few hours they had available the Stasi would have […]
From the outside the cadre of serving British Ambassadors presents a forbidding spectacle, a phalanx of Erudite Excellencies. Once upon a time these senior officials would serve until they reached full retirement age unless they had served in unhealthy malaria-stricken postings earlier in their careers, in which case they were […]
A tough question I have put to various candidates for jobs involving protocol instinct and practice: You are supervising the seating of VIPs at the theatre for a big British theatre night. As guests arrive you are told that two top VIPs allocated to the best central front-row seats are […]
Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I think that appearances matter. When one walks into a shop or office or home, what is the first impression? Smart, tidy, clean premises? People looking intelligent and interested to see you? A sense of good order? The grand former Federation Palace building in New Belgrade […]
The rise and further rise of the so-called ‘Precautionary Principle’ (PP) – particularly when it comes to trying to assess the environmental impact of past and future human activity – is, some say, a defining moment in intellectual history: "the most radical idea for rethinking humanity’s relationship to the natural world […]
Back in 1984/85 I was on the FCO’s Aviation Desk for a year, working mainly on Transatlantic air services issues (who could fly when and where and for how much), and in particular on the diplomatic ramifications of Freddie Laker’s antitrust lawsuit against British Airways and other carriers. The core […]
Having spent most of my working life in or dealing with societies suffering from the consequences of communism, I have tried to work out what it is communists really believe(d) in. Communists’ immediate policy goals are clear enough. To run and above all control everything on exclusively their own terms with […]
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 […]
My blog entry about allegedly Feckless Poles described how a small slip by an official interpreter caused some unwanted and unexpected headlines. Yet that at least was a slip. Back in Bosnia in the mid-1990s the interpreters of President Izetbegovic had a much more ambitious streak. After Bosnia’s first post-conflict elections […]
Back in the 1980s many in the FCO still recalled the days when a woman had to resign from the service on marriage – a fact which of course left only a tiny number of senior FCO women at the top of the British diplomatic world 20 years later. That […]
