WELCOME Formerly a university teacher, I am a freelance writer specialising in the theory and practice of diplomacy from the earliest times until the present. As well as hoping to encourage the study of diplomacy, this site provides periodic updating of two of my books.

Diplomacy: Theory and Practice 3rd edn, (Palgrave-Macmillan: Basingstoke and New York, 2005) ISBN 1-4039-9311-4 (pbk) 'Highly recommended' reading for employees of all US foreign affairs agencies	A Dictionary of Diplomacy (with Alan James), 2nd edn, (Palgrave-Macmillan: Basingstoke and New York, 2003) ISBN 1-4039-1536-9 (pbk)
CLICK HERE FOR ONLINE UPDATING Most recent update: 12 February 2008	CLICK HERE FOR ONLINE UPDATING Most recent update: 21 July 2008

To enable regular visitors to identify new material, the latest updates are entered in red.

NEWS AND VIEWS

DiploFoundation: 2009 Master/Postgraduate Diploma in Contemporary Diplomacy Call for applications DiploFoundation invites you to apply for the popular Master/Postgraduate Diploma in Contemporary Diplomacy, offered through the University of Malta. This programme offers a valuable opportunity for diplomats and other international relations professionals to continue studies while remaining on the job. The programme lasts for 12 – 15 months and consists of a 10-day residential workshop in Malta followed by 5 online courses of the participant’s choice. Highlights include flexibility of study time and place; contemporary and traditional topics in diplomacy; faculty members with academic and practical experience in the diplomatic field; and a learner-centered and interactive approach to online learning. The programme is highly rated by participants, who have seen immediate and lasting benefits ranging from the satisfaction of personal development to career advances. The application deadline is 15 October 2008. For further information and to apply please visit the DiploFoundation website or contact admissions@diplomacy.edu. [23 July 2008] New book published My latest book, Tilkidom and the Ottoman Empire: The Letters of Gerald Fitzmaurice to George Lloyd, 1906-1915, has just been published by The Isis Press, Istanbul. Read more about this here. [23 July 2008] Another gold mine for online research Two major collections of transcripts of interviews with former ambassadors are now available online. One of them is the work of the Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) in Washington and is to be found in the Frontline Diplomacy section of the American Memory Collection on the website of the Library of Congress. The other is the product of the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme (BDOHP) and is located on the website of Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College Cambridge. I have found both of these resources of great value in my own research. [1 June 2008] Gold mine for online research Those fortunate enough to have access to ProQuest’s online House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (most university staff and students in Britain, I believe) also have access to a gold mine of information on the history of the diplomatic and consular services. This is to be found in the voluminous papers of the numerous select committees and royal commissions which investigated these services in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They throw light not only on the British services but on foreign ones as well, because the Foreign Office was usually asked to provide information on them for comparative purposes. The papers are of three kinds: reports, minutes of evidence, and appendices. The minutes of evidence, actually verbatim transcripts of questions to and answers from the witnesses before the investigating bodies, are particularly valuable. Almost all of the reports have astonishingly detailed and helpful indexes as well. ProQuest has also made them searchable, though the original indexes are so good that this facility is not really necessary once you have found the document you want. The documents are all available as PDF downloads and are easier to manipulate in this format. Some of these papers are not easy to identify because the investigations which generated them were part of wider inspections of the civil service as a whole. As a result, they are sometimes masked by more general titles. It is partly for this reason that I thought it would be a good idea to offer a list of these papers (up to the First World War) in a form that will make them easy to locate. You will find the list here [7 April 2008] Open letter to broadcast journalists Please do not ask me to feature on radio or TV programmes. It is not my sort of work and I would be forced to decline. [27 November 2007]

Need an MA dissertation or PhD thesis topic? As regular visitors will know, I have a page on this site called Postgraduate research required on contemporary diplomacy. This has proved one of the most popular pages, so I have just overhauled and expanded it. However, I should add two cautions. First, the list of topics is not meant to be exhaustive: it is just a list of topics that have occurred to me as being under or poorly researched. Secondly, there is of course always room for a fresh (‘revisionist’) look at topics which may seem adequately or even ‘over researched’. After all, knowledge advances via the constant challenging of conventional wisdom, either on internal grounds or in the light of newly discovered source material – or, more usually, both. [12 October 2007] Writing essays Most university departments provide advice on this subject, publishers have got into it in a big way, and there is of course ample advice elsewhere on the internet. Nevertheless, I feel moved to make a few contributions of my own on points that I have found to present particular problems to students. As a result, I have just started a new section and launch it with a short note on how to tackle comparative essay questions. I shall follow it with one on 'introductions' when I have the time. [26 November 2007] Latest book reviews Diplomacy and Developing Nations: Post-Cold War foreign policy-making structures and processes - Justin Robertson and Maurice A. East (eds) [guest review] [19 June 2008] Foreign language translations My textbook, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, is available in Chinese, translated by Dr Pang Zhongying, Director of the Institute of Global Issues at Nankai University and published by Peking University Press (PUP); in Croatian, translated by Ksenija Jurišic and published in the Political Thought Series (Biblioteka Politicka Misao) of the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Zagreb; and in Greek, published by Editions Tourikis. A Serbian translation, published by Filip Visnjic of Belgrade, will be available in summer 2008. The Croatian translation of Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger was published in October 2005 by Biblioteka Politicka Misao; it is to be published in Chinese by PUP; and Albanian by Libraria 'Dukagjini'. A Dictionary of Diplomacy and Diplomatic Classics are also to be published in Chinese by PUP. Malgorzata van de Westelaken, Foreign Rights Consultant of Palgrave-Macmillan , would be pleased to hear from anyone interested in undertaking or promoting translations of these works into other languages. [11 April 2006] Diplomatic airmiles and green diplomacy I have for years been drawing attention to the wise refusal of states to abandon the resident embassy, despite the superficially attractive arguments of those who maintain that jet aircraft have – along with electronic communications – made it redundant. Well, now there is another reason for clinging to this institution, and one I should have spotted ages ago: the gratuitous jetting around of heads of state and government and other special envoys is bad for the environment. In Britain, the Lib-Dems have recently computed the number of airmiles run up by British ministers collectively in 2005–6: a staggering 6.5 million. I shudder to think how much CO2 the world diplomatic system as a whole is spewing out. The resident embassy is obviously the greenest form of diplomacy as well as, for most purposes, the best. [16 November 2006]