I list below, in categories corresponding roughly to the chapters in my textbook, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 6th ed (2022), books (and a few articles) that I believe valuable to all students of diplomacy. Those dealing with embassy substitutes, such as representative offices, are included under ‘Modern bilateral diplomacy’. The list is obviously not exhaustive. I have tried to restrict myself to recommending my own books to categories where I think other works are a bit thin on the ground. See also my Book Reviews and the ‘Further reading’ at the bottom of the ‘Updating’ pages for each chapter of the textbook.

This page also contains sections on ‘Novels by Former Diplomats and Intelligence Officers’ and ‘Political Thrillers and Historical Novels (by other writers)’.

Barder, Brian, What Diplomats Do: The Life and Work of Diplomats (2014). See this page for my praise of this book.

Berridge, G. R., Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 6th ed (2022). This new edition is due to be published in January.

Berridge, G. R. and Lorna Lloyd, The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy, 3rd edition (2012). In the first two editions, my co-author was Alan James.  The biographical sketches, introduced to illustrate some entries and provide colour to the book, were my own work. The dictionary has 401 pages, each of which is presented in two columns. It provides different ‘senses’ of the same term, the most commonly used as a rule listed first; and ample cross references.

Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A study of order in world politics (1977). See especially Part 2 and, in this part, Ch. 7, Diplomacy and International Order. Bull was a major figure in the ‘English school of International Relations’.

Hamilton, Keith and Richard Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy, 2nd ed (2011)
A very valuable historical account of the evolution of diplomatic practice but – unlike Anderson’s book – goes back further (to Ancient Greece) and comes up much nearer to the present. I always recommended this textbook as one that was complementary to my own.

Kissinger, Henry A., The White House Years (1979). Kissinger, originally an academic, was US President Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor and eventually Secretary of State. He is famous for the rapprochement with Communist China, detente with the Soviet Union, the extraction of the United States from Vietnam, and keeping the lid on Egypt-Israel tensions following the October War in 1973. This is the first and by far the most important volume of his memoirs. I list it here for two reasons: first, because it fired my own interest in diplomacy, on which subject it has a great deal, for example on  ‘linkage’ (I used to run a third-year undergraduate course focussed just on this book); and second, because it really irritates me that Kissinger’s later book, Diplomacy (1994), regularly forces my own Diplomacy: Theory and Practice into second place in G0ogle Scholar’s ‘diplomacy’ list by a huge margin, despite the fact that it is not a book about diplomacy at all but about statecraft! (On the concept of statecraft, see the entry in our Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy.)

Rana, Kishan S., 21st Century Diplomacy (2011). [review]

Roberts, Sir Ivor (ed), Satow’s Diplomatic Practice, 7th ed (2016). The British scholar-diplomat, Sir Ernest Satow, first published A Guide to Diplomatic Practice in 1917. This was followed by a revised edition in 1922, but he died in 1929 and all subsequent editions have been revised by recently retired British diplomats. It is the most respected English language manual of the profession. The current edition has 747 pages (including index) but is easy to navigate via a detailed contents list. For the first time, its chapters are individually authored.

Adcock, F. and D. J. Mosley, Diplomacy in Ancient Greece (1975). The only full length study of this subject. Extremely valuable, although the separately authored parts do not blend very well and there is considerable repetition; at one key point at least (the proxenos) it has been overtaken by later research . Mosley’s part is the most useful on diplomatic methods,

Anderson, M. S., The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450–1919 (1993). A solid historical treatment by a former Professor of International History at the LSE.

Anderson, Sonia, An English Consul in Turkey: Paul Rycaut at Smyrna, 1667–1678 (1989). A very illuminating window on mid-seventeenth century consular work; superbly researched. Smyrna is modern-day Izmir,

Barber, Peter, Diplomacy: The world of the honest spy (1979).
An authoritative and richly illustrated brief history of diplomatic practice from about 1400 to 1900. It was designed to complement an exhibition on this theme held at the British Library but, as the author says in his Preface, presents ‘a coherent survey of the subject which stands quite independently of the exhibition.’

Berridge, G. R., Maurice Keens-Soper and T. G. Otte, Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger (2001). This is a collection of essays by men whose thought both reflected and shaped the diplomacy of the times in which they lived: Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Grotius, and Richelieu (Berridge), Wicquefort and Callières (Keens-Soper), and Nicolson and Kissinger (Otte ).

Berridge, G. R., Diplomatic Classics: Selected texts from Commynes to Vattel (2004).
This book provides convenient access to the thought of some of the most important figures writing on diplomacy when modern diplomacy was taking shape; that is, in the interval between the end of the middle ages and the French revolution. Lengthy passages from two works, De Vera’s Le parfait ambassadeur and Pecquet’s Discours sur l’art de négocier, appear in English translation for the first time. In the main, I chose the selections to highlight the contributions for which the individual writers are best known (for example, the attack by Commynes on ‘summitry’), although some were picked with a view to modern interests (for example, De Vera’s views on women in diplomacy). In the interests of clarity, selections from some of the 14 texts represented are grouped under thematic sub-headings. All are fully introduced, annotated, and accompanied by recommendations for further reading.

Berridge, G. R., British Diplomacy in Turkey, 1583 to the present: A study in the evolution of the resident embassy (2009) [reviews]. Part A of this book analyses the evolution of the embassy as a working unit up to the First World War: the buildings, diplomats, dragomans, consular network, and communications. Part B examines how, without any radical changes except in its communications, it successfully met the heavy demands made on it in the following century. The book is a defence of the continuing value of the resident embassy.

Berridge, G. R.,  Diplomacy, Satire and the Victorians): The Life and Writings of E. C. Grenville-Murray  (2018) [reviews]. This is the only biography of one of the most controversial British diplomats of the nineteenth century, whose moonlighting as a journalist for Household Words, the periodical edited by Charles Dickens, eventually got him sacked by the Foreign Office while Consul-General at Odessa in 1868. He obtained his revenge by attacking it relentlessly in a satirical journal he founded in London, The Queen’s Messenger. He eventually fled into an immensely productive literary exile in France.

Berridge, G. R., The Diplomacy of Ancient Greece: A short introduction (2018). Available here. A work of synthesis of existing scholarship designed for the student of diplomacy with no prior knowledge of the subject. Chapter 1 deals with the personnel, Chapter 2 with their conduct of bilateral diplomacy, and Chapter 3 with multilaterals.

Bertram, Mark, Room for Diplomacy: The History of Britain’s Diplomatic Buildings Overseas 1800–2000, 2nd ed (Spire Books, 2017), together with accompanying online ‘Catalogue of British embassy and consulate buildings, 1800 – 2010′ . This book is richly illustrated but is no coffee table book. Bertram is a highly qualified architect who worked in public service all his life, ending up as head of the estate department in the Foreign Office from 1985 until 1997. His book, which starts with ‘First Ownership 1800–1815’ and ends with ‘Hong Kong, Moscow and Berlin 1983–2000’, is fluent and authoritative and without doubt the last word on the problems and possibilities of diplomatic and consular buildings – except that it is understandably silent on the issue of their security.

Bozeman, Adda B., Politics and Culture in International History, 2nd ed (1994. A most important book, with very interesting sections in chs. 9 and 13 on Byzantine, Venetian and modern European diplomacy.

Britton, Roswell S., ‘Chinese interstate intercourse before 700 BC’, American Journal of International Law, vol. 29(4), 1935. A rare contribution for China in this period.

Chaplais, Pierre, English Diplomatic Practice in the Middle Ages (2003). Really a book for specialists in ‘diplomatic’ (the noun rather than the adjective), the study by medievalists of the forms of documents ‘in order to authenticate and date them so that they may be more fully understood,’ as S. D. Church says in a review of this book.  Chaplais’s scholarship is much admired but for the non-specialist this is a book to be dipped into via the contents list rather than read from cover to cover. To provide context for the diplomatic, he has much to say about envoys, oral messages, and the embassy’s progress, for example.

Cohen, Raymond and Raymond Westbrook (eds), Amarna Diplomacy: The beginnings of international  relations (2000). The 18 essays in this collection deal with what the 3,000-year old ‘letters’ (actually cuneiform tablets) discovered at Amarna in Uppr Egypt in 1887, tell us about the international system of the Ancient Near East, including the diplomatic methods of its ‘Great Kings’.

Craig, Gordon A.,  and Felix Gilbert (eds), The Diplomats, 1919–1939 (1953)
Craig, Gordon A., and Francis L. Loewenheim (eds), The Diplomats, 1939–1979 (1994). Two large, valuable collections of essays by respected scholars. Mainly dealing with important foreign ministers and ambassadors, they also contain chapters on foreign ministries, leaders who made a major impact on the foreign policies of their states, and more general issues. The first volume has 21 chapters, 9 on ‘The Twenties’ and 12 on ‘The Thirties’; the second has 23, divided between parts on ‘The War and its Aftermath’, ‘The Cold War’, ‘A New Europe’, ‘The Wider World’, and ‘Détente and its Limitations’.

Cuttino, G. P., English Diplomatic Administration, 1259–1339, 2nd ed (1971). See especially Chapter V on ‘Agents and Mechanics of Diplomacy’. Authoritative.

Dickinson, J. G., The Congress of Arras, 1435 (1955). A most illuminating account of an episode of medieval multilateral diplomacy, drawn to my attention by Anne-Brigitte Spitzbarth (University of Lille III).

Eilers, Claude (ed), Diplomats and Diplomacy in the Roman World (Brill: Leiden, 2009). See only Introduction and ‘Roman perspectives on Greek diplomacy’ by Sheila L. Ager.

Frey, Linda and Marsha Frey, ‘“The reign of the charlatans is over”’: the French revolutionary attack on diplomatic practice’, The Journal of Modern History, vol. 65(4), Dec., 1993. A valuable piece by the Frey sisters.

Franklin, Simon and Jonathan Shepard (eds), Byzantine Diplomacy: Papers of the Twenty-fourth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Cambridge March 1990 (1992). A comprehensive collection of essays of a uniformly high standard.

Frey, L. S.,  and M. L. Frey, The History of Diplomatic Immunity (1999). I reviewed this massive volume here.

Frodsham, J. D. (trsl.), The First Chinese Embassy to the West: The journals of Kuo Sung-T’ao, Liu Hsi-Hung and Chang Te-Yi (1974). In 1876, Kuo Sung-T’ao sailed with a small party on an English mail steamer to establish in London the first resident Chinese diplomatic mission in the West (it was actually a legation, 11-strong by 1879). Kuo favoured peaceful relations with the Barbarian Westerners, which made him unpopular at home. The journals of the party make interesting if not altogether surprising reading. Frodsham provides a long introduction. D. C. Boulger’s The Life of Sir Halliday Macartney, Kuo’s ‘English Secretary’, can be found in the Internet Archive. See also Jenny Huangfu Day, ‘Mediating Sovereignty: The Qing legation in London and its diplomatic representation of China, 1876–1901’, Modern Asian studies, 2021-07, vol.55 (4), pp.1151-84

Grenville-Murray, E. C., Side-Lights on English Society, or Sketches from Life, Social and Satirical (1881), vol. 1, pp. 151-254 (‘On H.B.M.’s Service’). A satirical treatment of British diplomacy in the mid-nineteenth century, often highly amusing. The engravings, however, are disappointing. G-M deals with each position in the diplomatic service according to his view of their rank, starting with ambassadors – and putting ambassadresses last, after messengers and interpreters.[Available free at the Internet Archive]

Grundy, Isobel, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment (1999). Bags of detail; an exhaustively researched biography of the wife of the British Ambassador at Constantinople (1717–18), the forgettable Edward Wortley-Montagu. Lady Mary is famous for her Turkish Embassy Letters, re-published most recently, I believe by Virago Press in 1994, and essential reading for anyone interested in women and diplomacy; and also well-known for her experimentation with smallpox inoculation.

Hamilton, Keith, Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador (1990). Lord Bertie (pronounced ‘Bartie’) was British Ambassador to France from 1905 until 1918 and after the First World War was widely held to epitomise the ‘old dipomacy’. This is a formidably researched and polished account of his diplomatic career, focussing chiefly on his Paris embassy, by an author who was a full-time academic before becoming an FCO historian. This is a model for ambassador studies. Keith Hamilton is also co-author of the textbook noted below.

Hamilton, Keith and Richard Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy, 2nd ed (2011). A very valuable historical account of the evolution of diplomatic practice but – unlike M S. Anderson’s book (see above) – goes back further (to Ancient Greece) and comes up much nearer to the present.

Hill, David Jayne, A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe. A US scholar-diplomat, Hill (1850–1932) provides a magisterial, 3-volume work, running to almost 2000 pages, which starts with the Roman Empire and ends at the French Revolution of 1789. At first glance it is forbidding but even in the printed copy, finding what you want is assisted by a good index and amazingly detailed contents list for each volume. (It is a rare weakness of each index that they do not contain ‘mediations’ but many examples can be found by trawling the contents lists or, of course, using the Search function in the online editions.) Hill uses the term ‘diplomacy’ broadly, to embrace foreign policies and the manoeuvring of states to accomplish them, so I provide below notes on some of the most useful pages for what he calls ‘diplomatic usages’ (methods) and the conditions that fostered them:
Vol. 1, The Struggle for Universal Empire (1905) [Available free at the Internet Archive]: see esp. ‘Barbarian’ kings, 38–41; Byzantium, 206–9; Venice, 262, 296–8; Italy, 356–­62
Vol. 2, The Establishment of Territorial Sovereignty (1906) [Available free at the Internet Archive]: see esp. conditions fostering French diplomacy, 83–­4; French diplomacy, and the ‘beginning of permanent missions in Italy’, 152–­9, and in Europe 308–­10
Vol. 3, The Diplomacy of the Age of Absolutism  (1914) [Available free at the Internet Archive]: see esp. diplomats of Louis XIV, 51–­5; immunities at Rome, 201–­2; back-channels long before Henry Kissinger, 501–­2, 530, 582.

Hopkins, Michael F. et al (eds), The Washington Embassy: British ambassadors to the United States, 1939–77 (2009). Eleven good essays with a conclusion by John W. Young and myself.

Jones, Raymond A., The British Diplomatic Service 1815–1914 (1983). A generally sound, well-organized account; particularly interesting on the ‘family embassy’ and its decline during this period. A graduate of the Department of International History at the LSE, Jones published his thesis from that Department in 1971: The Nineteenth Century Foreign Office: An administrative history.

Liverani, Mario, International Relations in the Ancient Near East, 1600–1100 BC (2002).
An immensely authoritative work by the Professor of History of the Ancient Near East and Director of the Inter-University Research Centre for Saharan Archaeology at the University of Rome. It is a revised version of a book originally published in Padua in 1990 as Prestige and Interest.

Mack, William, Proxeny and Polis: Institutional networks in the Ancient Greek World (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2015). Ground-breaking research, flagged on the database published on the Internet (below).

Mack, William (Project Director), Proxeny Networks of the Ancient World (a database of proxeny networks of the Greek city-states).

Mattingly, Garrett, Renaissance Diplomacy (1955). The widely acclaimed classic account of the birth of the resident embassy in Renaissance Italy. A superb book. Should be read in conjunction with Donald Queller’s splendid The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages.

Meier, S. A., The Messenger in the Ancient Semitic World (1988). A very tight, scholarly tract.

Moran, William L., The Amarna Letters, ed. and trsl. by William L. Moran (1992). See Cohen and Westbrook above.

Mösslang, Markus and Torsten Riotte (eds), The Diplomats’ World: A cultural history of diplomacy, 1815–1914 (2008). A collection of 16 very varied essays inspired by a conference organized by the German Historical Institute in London.

Munn-Rankin, J. M., ‘Diplomacy in Western Asia in the early second millennium B.C.’, Iraq, Spring 1956, vol. 18(1). Stands alone, I believe, in treatments of this particular period.

Nickles, David Paull, Under the Wire: How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy (2003).
The first full-length study of this important subject. Recommended by the State Department’s historian. I reviewed it here.

Nicol, Donald M., Byzantium and Venice: A study in diplomatic and cultural relations (1988, PoD edn 1992). I started to skim this for passages dealing with Byzantine diplomatic method but got hooked and read it from cover to cover. It manages to be rich in detail without obscuring the main themes. A brilliant and sometimes quite gripping historical narrative. Also particularly good on the role of the Venetian baillie (resident diplomat). Devotees of the historical novels of Dorothy Dunnett (esp. the House of Niccolo series) should read this book. Fact really is stranger than fiction.

Nicolson, Harold, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (1954). A well known account, with which all historians of diplomacy need to be familiar. It is rather superficial but elegant and sharp, and provocative in a way beloved by those searching for good quotes for exam questions.

Peyrefitte, Alain, The Collision of Two Civilizations: The British expedition to China, 1792–4 (1993). An enthralling and well researched account of the failed attempt of the British envoy, Lord Macartney, to establish diplomatic and commercial relations with China. Translated from the French.

Queller, D. E., The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (1967). A great book, full of wisdom and learning. The ‘prequel’ to Mattingly’s Renaissance Diplomacy.

St. Clair, William, Lord Elgin and the Marbles (1983). Elgin was by no means the first or the least scrupulous British ambassador in Istanbul to arrange for the removal of priceless ‘marbles’ (sculptures) from the Ottoman Empire, particularly from its Greek provinces; he is however the most controversial. This is a lively, entertaining, authoritative, and beautifully written treatment of this episode. One ends up almost feeling sorry for him.

Sarkissian, A. O. (ed), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1962), esp. the ch. by Rohan Butler on ‘Paradiplomacy’.

Skinner, Quentin, Machiavelli (1981). Ch. 1, The Diplomat. An illuminating piece by a brilliant political theorist.

Wozniak, E. E., ‘Diplomacy, Byzantine’, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 4 (1984). Learned and succinct.

Young, E., ‘The development of the law of diplomatic relations’, British Journal of International Law, vol. 40,  1964. A very useful piece.

Young, John W., Twentieth Century Diplomacy: A case study of British practice, 1963–1976 (2008). A first-rate work by one of the leading scholars of British diplomacy and recent diplomatic history. It is unique in so far as it shows how each of the main modes of diplomacy (resident embassies, special missions, bilateral summits, and so on) were employed by one state over one relatively short period. It is also based on the official papers which were the latest to be de-classified at the time of writing.

Yurdusev (ed.), A. Nuri, Ottoman Diplomacy (2004). A collection of essays on an intriguing subject, well edited by Nuri Yurdusev of the Dept. of International Relations at the Middle Eastern Technical University in Ankara. It contains two of my own pieces, so I could hardly leave this out!

Foreign ministries have not been a popular subject for study in recent years, evidence of which is the presence of only one chapter on them (out of a total of 49) in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy. This accounts for the relative brevity of the following list, the prominence in it of titles chiefly for the historian, and the inclusion of the chapter on the foreign ministry from my own textbook.

Berridge, G. R., Diplomacy: Theory and Practice (2015; new edition forthcoming January 2022). See Chapter 1, The Foreign Ministry, and the numerous articles listed in ‘Further reading’ at the end.

Cooper, Andrew F. et al, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy (2013). The only chapter on the foreign ministry in this generally disappointing collection (Chapter 5) is a rather bland if knowledgeable treatment of the subject by former British diplomat Sir Jeremy Greenstock. However, the index entry for ‘foreign ministries’ directs the reader to pages in other chapters that are also of interest.

A Democratic Staff Report prepared for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate, Diplomacy in Crisis: The Trump Administration’s decimation of the State Department, 28 July 2020. Hard-hitting but certainly not just a polemic: clearly organized, and authoritatively supported with 274 footnotes full of references for further reading. Find here.

Hocking, Brian (ed.), Foreign Ministries: Change and adaptation (1999). An important collection of essays on 12 MFAs, though variable in quality and now dated. The editor’s introduction is particularly useful.

Hocking, Brian  and David Spence (eds), Foreign Ministries in the European Union (2002).
Essays on 13 MFAs this time, most of which are impressive; some overlap with the earlier volume.

Neilson, Keith and T. G. Otte, The Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 1854-1946 (2009). I would have preferred to see this organized more thematically (as I said in a review in Diplomacy & Statecraft) but it remains a very valuable work by two eminent historians.

Otte, T. G., The Foreign Office Mind: The making of British foreign policy, 1865-1914 (2011).  A massive and authoritative book, which I have reviewed for Diplomacy & Statecraft. However, note that, in contrast to the approach of Zara Steiner in the piece listed immediately below, it includes an account of the attitudes and influence of the diplomats abroad as well as of the senior clerks in the foreign ministry at home.

Pope, Laurence, The Demilitarization of American Diplomacy (2014). This is an attack on the US State Department even before Donald Trump got his hands on it. Pope was a US scholar-diplomat. See Chs. 2–3.

Rana, Kishan S., 21st Century Diplomacy: A practitioner’s guide (2011). See Ch. 6 for a very knowledgeable account of the subject.

Rana, Kishan S., Asian Diplomacy: The foreign ministries of China, India, Japan, Singapore and Thailand (2007). A rare comparative exercise; very illuminating.

Rice, Condoleezza, No Higher Honor: A memoir of my years in Washington (2011). Previously National Security Advisor, Rice was Secretary of State, 2005–9. Ch. 21 contains interesting reflections on the State Department, including policy planning.

Steiner, Zara, ‘The Foreign Office under Sir Edward Grey, 1905-1914’, in F. H. Hinsley (ed), British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey (1977). A piece by one of the greatest authorities on the subject.

Steiner, Zara (ed), The Times Survey of Foreign Ministries of the World (1982). Indispensable for any serious student of the ministry of foreign affairs. The introduction by Zara Steiner, author of the highly praised Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898–1914, is very instructive and there are essays on 24 foreign ministries, including three on China and two on Austria. (The others are those of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, USSR, UK, and USA.) Impressive and highly interesting historical detail; all contributors authorities in their fields. Now dated as far as the contemporary picture is concerned.

Strang, Lord, The Foreign Office (1955). An illuminating insight into the official mind of the British foreign ministry written by one of its former permanent under-secretaries.

Many foreign ministries have their own websites, some of which provide at least a list of the different departments (sometimes even an organization chart), while a few go so far as to give a history of the ministry. The back copies of State Magazine, available via the US State Department’s website, are also useful.

Barker, J. Craig, The Abuse of Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities: A Necessary Evil? (1996). Prompted by the shooting dead of a British policewoman from the Libyan Embassy in London in 1984, Barker’s book considers the question from every angle. However, it was criticised in a very sharp review by Hazel Fox in the International and Comparative Law Quarterly (vol. 46, no. 3, July 1997) for adopting a ‘curiously narrow view of abuse’, dismissing it as simply not arising in the case of diplomatic ‘privileges’  in such matters as taxation, as opposed to ‘immunities’ from enforcement procedures.

Barker, J. Craig, The Protection of Diplomatic Personnel (2006). A well-received general account of the problem and how it is tackled.

Behrens, Paul, Diplomatic Interference and the Law (2016). I reviewed this weighty book here.

Berridge, G. R., Diplomatic Classics: Selected texts from Commynes to Vattel (2004). Chs. on Gentili, Grotius, Bynkershoek, and Vattel.

Cahier, P., ‘The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations’, International Conciliation, vol. 37, 1969. As I recall, this article concentrates on the changes (or, as lawyers prefer to say, ‘developments’) in the customary law made by the VCDR.

Denza, Eileen, Diplomatic Law: Commentary on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 4th ed (2016). The work of a former legal counsellor in the FCO, Eileen Denza’s book, published by Oxford University Press, provides the definitive text on the VCDR (1961). As she says at the end of a short introduction, ‘It is intended principally as a practitioner’s handbook. Each Article or group of Articles is placed in the context of the previous customary international law, the negotiating history is described insofar as it remains illuminating, ambiguities or difficulties of interpretation are analysed, and the subsequent state practice is described.’

Kerley, E. L., ‘Some Aspects of the Vienna Conference on Diplomatic Intercourse and Immunities’, American Journal of International Law, vol. 56, 1962. Interesting as the reaction of a member of the US delegation to the conference that produced the VCDR.

Shaw, Malcolm N., International Law, 9th ed (2021), Ch. 12 includes a short but spot-on treatment of the subject. While he was still at Leicester (he is now at Cambridge), Malcolm and I taught a Diplomatic Law course together. He did the hard stuff.

Young, E., ‘The development of the law of diplomatic relations’, British Journal of International Law, vol. 40,  1964. A very useful piece.

See also Primary sources for study.

Bailey, Thomas A., The Art of Diplomacy: The American experience (1968). A clear and authoritative collection of wise maxims on diplomacy by a well known diplomatic historian. Though its examples are now somewhat dated it is still well worth reading. Teachers might cull it in order to fashion exam questions and students pore over it in order to know what to expect: “‘Great powers can afford to lose face.’ Discuss.” (Answer? Yes, but on some issues more than others, and on none continually.)

Cohen, Raymond, Negotiating across Cultures: International communication in an interdependent world, 2nd ed (1997). The best book on the subject; published by the US Institute of Peace Press. Particularly interesting on the impact of cultural differences on Arab-Israeli relations.

Cradock, Percy, Experiences of China (1994). Instructive on, among other things, the Anglo-Chinese negotiations that produced the Hong Kong agreement. Cradock was British Ambassador at Beijing 1978–84 and from 1984 to 1992 the prime minister’s foreign policy adviser.

Gross-Stein, J. (ed), Getting to the Table: The process of international pre-negotiation (1989). One of the few books on this important subject.

Keene, Edward, ‘The Treaty-Making Revolution of the Nineteenth Century’, The International History Review, vol. 34 (3), 2012. A very careful and suggestive descriptive account.

Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980). A well-regarded, accessible book on a complex subject. I found this very instructive for the development of my argument on ‘metaphors of movement’ in the chapter in my textbook on diplomatic momentum.

Lantis, Jeffrey S., The Life and Death of International Treaties: Double-edged diplomacy and the politics of ratification in comparative perspective (2009). Or how treaties need to be negotiated with key ministries and agencies at home as well as with parties abroad.

Quandt, William B., Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics (1986). A detailed insider account of the negotiations in 1977–9 that issued in the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. Also includes an outstanding analysis of the implications for US foreign policy and diplomacy of the presidential electoral cycle (Ch. 2), and useful documentary appendices (incl. side letters).

Salem, Elie A., Violence and Diplomacy in Lebanon: The Troubled Years, 1982–1988 (1995). Salem was Lebanon’s foreign minister from 1982 until 1984, and then adviser to its president until 1988. His account of the prenegotiations on Israel’s military withdrawal from his country is highly illuminating; see especially Ch.2.

Zartman, I. William and Maureen Berman, The Practical Negotiator (1982). Still a useful text for its general analysis. Well organized by stages of negotiation.

Berridge, G. R., Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 6th ed. (2022). See especially Ch. 7 (Embassies) and Ch. 14 (Embassy Substitutes).

Berridge, G. R.,  British Diplomacy in Turkey, 1583 to the Present (2009). This is a history of the British Embassy in Turkey; for the embassy in modern times, see especially Ch. 10 [reviews]

Berridge, G. R., Embassies in Armed Conflict (2012)  [review in LSE Review of Books]

Berridge, G. R., Diplomacy and Secret Service: A short introduction (2019). Published on the ISSUU platform, this has much on the ‘diplomatic cover’ provided by embassies to intelligence officers and the difficulties ambassadors sometimes have with the ‘cuckoos’ in their nests.

Bertram, Mark, Room for Diplomacy: The history of Britain’s diplomatic buildings, 1800-2000, 2nd ed (2017). [see my review here]; also his Catalogue of British embassy and consular buildings, 1800-2010, which is an exceptionally detailed and well illustrated appendix to his book, and is freely available here.

Dobrynin, Anatoly, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents (1995). Dobrynin was Soviet ambassador to Washington from 1962 until 1986, an exceptionally long period for any diplomat of a major power to occupy the same post. It’s a mine of useful information and very clearly written.

Hurd, Douglas, The Search for Peace (1997). A short but shrewd book by a former British diplomat and Conservative  Party foreign secretary.

Lloyd, Lorna, Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth office of high commissioner, 1880–2006 (2007). An immaculately researched study of a resident mission that is often misunderstood.

Loeffler, Jane C. ,The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies, 2nd ed (2011). This is a highly original, well researched, and extremely interesting book exploring the reasoning behind changes in the design and location of America’s embassies after the Second World War.

Mayers, David, The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy (1995). A solid historical treatment, focussing in the main on the opinions and influence of individual ambassadors.

Meyer, Christopher, DC Confidential: The controversial memoirs of Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War(2005). I have reviewed this here.

Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations, revised by Kenneth W. Thompson and David Clinton (2005). Morgenthau’s classic textbook, first published in 1948. It is interesting to read the high priest of power politics on the subject of diplomacy, on which there is of course quite a lot in this book.

Newsom, David D. (ed), Diplomacy under a Foreign Flag: When nations break relations (1990). Important not least because it is the only full-length study of the institution of the protecting power and its modern elaboration, the interests section. Contains useful case studies.

Rana, Kishan S. Bilateral Diplomacy(2002). I have reviewed this book here.

Rana, Kishan S., The 21st Century Ambassador (2006). Another splendid example of the wit and wisdom of Ambassador Rana.

Sharp, Paul and Geoffrey Wiseman (eds), The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution of International Society (2007). This book deserves attention for its original focus as well as for the high quality of some of its 13 essays. It is, of course, about the multinational ‘body’ of diplomats in each capital city, not about the diplomatic service.

Sullivan, Joseph G. (ed), Embassies under Siege (1995). A very useful collection of individual experiences from the respected Institute for the Study of Diplomacy in Washington.

Young, John W., Twentieth Century Diplomacy (2008). See especially Chs. 4 and 9 of this work by a leading international historian.

Atkin, Nicholas, The Forgotten French (2003). A fascinating account of how the French consuls in Britain continued to work after the Fall of France to Nazi Germany in 1940.

Berridge, G. R., Gerald Fitzmaurice (1865–1939), Chief Dragoman of the British Embassy in Turkey (2007) [reviews]. The dragomans who worked for this embassy were members of the Levant Consular Service.

Berridge,  G. R., British Diplomacy in Turkey, 1583 to the Present (2009).  Ch. 4 (Consuls: trading consuls, and Levantines; Hornby’s Supreme Consular Court; the founding of the Levant Service; political consuls; the consulate-general – controversy and contraction; ‘the step-child of the Foreign Office’).

Hertz, Martin F. (ed.), The Consular Dimension of Diplomacy: A symposium (1983). Chiefly about US consuls. Numerous short contributions defending the importance of consular work.

Kennedy, Charles Stuart, The American Consul: A history of the United States consular service, 1776–1924 (2015). A very thorough account, with a long and useful bibliography.

Lee, Luke T. and John Quigley, Consular Law and Practice, 3rd edn (2008). The ‘bible’ of the subject.

Melissen, Jan and Ana Mar Fernández (eds), Consular Affairs and Diplomacy (2011). A welcome attempt to bring a broader than usual focus on the subject, with five thematic chapters, three on the consular services of the ‘great powers’ (the Russians will have been relieved to see themselves included together with the Americans and the Chinese), and four on the history of the consular institution oddly tacked on at the end – their position does not do them justice.

Platt, D. C. M., The Cinderella Service: British consuls since 1825 (1971). Platt felt strongly about the inferior status accorded the consuls by the diplomats and wrote a persuasive defence of their value.

Roberts, Sir Ivor (ed.), Satow’s Diplomatic Practice, 7th edn (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2018). See Book II.

Ball, George, Diplomacy for a Crowded World (1976). A brilliant polemic against summitry.

Barder, Brian, What Diplomats Do: The life and work of diplomats (2014). Ch. 6: an engaging account of work in a permanent mission to the UN in New York.

Brown, Gordon, My Life, Our Times (2017).  In Ch. 16, then British prime minister Gordon Brown provides a very illuminating account of how the G20 London Summit in April 2009 was organized to help prevent a major world depression following the financial crisis of 2008–9.

Cohen, Raymond, Theatre of Power: The art of diplomatic signalling (1987). This brilliant book on non-verbal communication is not expressly focussed on summitry but, with its great emphasis on ‘the leader’, bears on it indirectly in the most intimate manner.

Dunn, David H. (ed), Diplomacy at the Highest Level: The evolution of international summitry (1996). A first class collection of essays on the subject and still one of the best books on the subject, topped and tailed by the editor.  The largest section deals with institutionalized summits, and includes one by Richard Hodder-Williams on African summitry.

Haass, Richard N., ‘Summing Up the Trump Summits’, 25 July 2018, Council on Foreign Relations. A short but very strong piece; prefers to reserve the term ‘summit’ for meetings of ‘significance’.

Macmillan, Margaret, Seize the Hour: When Nixon met Mao (2006). The summit between US President Nixon and Chinese leader Mao Zedong in 1972 marked a turning point in twentieth century history and no-one was better qualified to record it than international historian Margaret Macmillan.

Patrick, Stewart, ‘The New “New Multilateralism”: Minilateral cooperation, but at what cost?’, Global Summitry, vol. 1 (2), Winter 2015. Rather congested but drives to a compelling conclusion nevertheless.

Reynolds, David, Summits: Six meetings that shaped the twentieth century (2007). Diplomatic historian David Reynolds is a major contributor to the debate on summitry. This book covers the period from 1938 until 1985.

Sievers, Loraine and Sam Daws, The Procedure of the UN Security Council, 4th ed (2014).
The holy book on the subject: comprehensive, clear, authoritative, 725 pages with extensive appendices and excellent index.

World Health Assembly, 73rd, ‘Written silence procedure for the consideration of proposals by the Seventy-third World Health Assembly between its de minimis and  resumed sessions’, WHA73(7), 19 May 2020. The one-page annex to this short document explains the WHA’s version of this important procedure very clearly.

Young, John W., Twentieth Century Diplomacy (2008). Chs. 6 (Bilateral summits) and 7 (Multilateral diplomacy) in this outstanding work published by Cambridge University Press.

Arndt, Richard T., The First Resort of Kings: American cultural diplomacy in the twentieth century (2005). A full, very well informed and sympathetic treatment of the subject.

Cull, Nicholas J., The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American propaganda and public diplomacy, 1945–1989 (2008). Cull is a leading authority on ‘public diplomacy’ and this is a valuable book, despite the wafer-thin distinction in its sub-title.

Snow, Nancy and Nicholas J. Cull (eds), Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, 2nd edn (2020). The new edition of this vast ‘handbook’ (it has 528 pages and a great many individually authored chapters) is less military-oriented than its predecessor, in which the late Phil Taylor was the other editor.

Taylor, Philip M., Munitions of the Mind: A history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present era, 3rd ed (2003). Taylor had a passionate interest in this subject and is always worth reading.

Wiseman, Geoffrey (ed), Isolate or Engage: Adversarial states, US foreign policy, and public diplomacy (2015). As with all edited collections, cohesion in this book was difficult for the editor to achieve. Nevertheless, its theme that public diplomacy is no substitute for diplomatic relations is well made if it should be self-evident.

Bercovitch, Jacob and J. Z. Rubin (eds), Mediation in International Relations new edition (1994). A good collection of essays by established figures in the field.

Bercovitch, J., ‘International Mediation and Intractable Conflict’, January 2004, Beyond Intractability. This is a short, crisp piece.

Crocker, Chester A. and others (eds), Herding Cats: Multiparty mediation in a complex world (1999). I have reviewed this here.

Diamond, Louise and John McDonald, Multi-Track Diplomacy: A systems approach to peace 3rd ed (1996). One of the most popular books supporting this approach to mediation. Read in conjunction with Crocker et al, Herding Cats, above.

Holbrooke, Richard, To End a War (1998). Holbrooke headed the US team that grabbed the mediation in the Balkans and produced the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. This is the memoir of a muscular mediation.

Kleiboer, Marieke, ‘Understanding success and failure of international mediation’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 40(2), June 1996. A lengthy trailer for the book (see below); very acute.

Kleiboer, Marieke, The Multiple Realities of International Mediation (1998).

Quandt, W. B., Camp David: Peacemaking and politics (1986). A masterful insider account of US President Jimmy Carter’s mediation between the Israeli and Egyptian governments that produced the peace treaty between them in 1979 and the return of Sinai (with conditions) to Egypt.

Sick, Gary, All Fall Down: America’s fateful encounter with Iran (2001). Sick was the chief White House official handling the hostage crisis. As a result, this is a valuable primary source on the Algerian mediation that ended it.

Touval, Saadia, The Peace Brokers: Mediators in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-79 (1982); and Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars (2001). Touval is the scholar most closely associated with the mistaken view that successful mediators do not need to be impartial; but his work is interesting and needs to be taken seriously.

USIP, The Peacemaker’s Toolkit. This extremely valuable site provides free PDF downloads of numerous ‘best practice’ handbooks on key aspects of mediation, including its timing, working with ‘groups of friends’, and track two; find here.

Whitfield, Teresa, Working with Groups of Friends (2010). Clear and  authoritative; find here.

Novels about diplomacy and espionage written by former officers or – like Graham Greene – those who were still active in an unofficial capacity, have a special authenticity. As well as being enjoyable to those with a taste for the genre, they sometimes provide real insights into the minds and procedures of their crafts.

  • Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
    Secret Intelligence Service officer in the First World War, first in Switzerland and then in Russia; and in the American OSS (later CIA) in the Second World War. His novel Ashenden, based on his Swiss experience, was adapted for the cinema by Hitchcock as ‘Secret Agent’ (1936) (ODNB; Jeffery, MI6).
    Ashenden
  • Stendhal (1783-1842)Real name Henri Beyle, French consul at the then Austrian imperial port of Trieste only briefly (winter of 1830-1) because the authorities took exception to his liberal views, and then at Civitavecchia near Rome (where the papal authorities were persuaded to swallow similar reservations), 1831 until his death. The publication of the first of his two most famous novels, Le Rouge et le Noir (translated usually The Red and the Black but sometimes Scarlet and Black), had coincided with the announcement of his appointment to Trieste. The second, La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma), was written while he was on a prolonged leave from Civitavecchia, of which he was not fond.
    The Red and the Black
    The Charterhouse of Parma
  • Graham Greene (1904-91) Ministry of Information (London), 1940-1; Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)), 1941-4 and thereafter unofficially in part-time service at least until the 1980s while publicly making pro-Soviet statements as a cover (brilliant article by Michael Shelden in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).
    Stamboul Train
    A Gun for Sale
    The Ministry of Fear
    The Third Man and the Fallen Idol
    The Confidential Agent
    The Quiet American

    Our Man in Havana
    The Honorary Consul
    The Human Factor (Greene’s last major novel and described in the ODNB as his ‘most explicit treatment of the world of espionage’; on the New York Times best-seller list for six months.)
  • Kenneth Benton(1909-99)
    Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) officer from 1937 until 1968; find more information about him here.
    Sole Agent
    Spy in Chancery
    Vengeance in Venice
    Greek Fire
    Twenty-Fourth Level
  • Charles Forsyte (1920-2009)
    Real name: Gordon Charles George Philo. Long-serving and well regarded British intelligence officer. He was appointed with diplomatic cover at three British overseas posts in the decades after the Second World War: Istanbul (third secretary 1954), Ankara (second secretary 1957), and Hanoi (consul-general 1968); and as a liaison officer to the Malaysian government at KL, 1963. Between these postings and after his final foreign tour, he occupied influential positions at Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) headquarters in London until his retirement in 1978. He was in charge of training new entrants to SIS when David Cornwell (‘John le Carré’) switched from the Security Service (MI5) to SIS (MI6) in 1960. Diplomatic Death and Murder with Minarets are set in the British Consulate-General in Istanbul and the British diplomatic apartments complex in Ankara respectively, both of which he evidently knew well. The first of these novels is much the best. Philo was a keen amateur magician, and – astonishing to report – after his death his private notebook on the subject was found by Marco Pusteria in a second-hand bookshop in Cromer on the north Norfolk coast (FFB: The Detective Novels of Charles Forsyte, 17 October 2014; Marco Pusteria, ‘Spies, Magic, Manuscripts’, 20 July 2013;  The Times [obituary], 18 March 2009;  Foreign Office List, subsequently Diplomatic Service List).
    Diplomatic Death (1961)
    Diving Death (1962), published in the US under the title Dive into Danger
    Double Death (1965)
    Murder with Minarets (1968)
  • John le Carré (1931-)
    Real name David Cornwell. Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) agent with cover as second secretary in the British embassy in Bonn in the early 1960s and then briefly as a ‘political consul’ (his own description) in the large consulate-general in Hamburg (Author’s official website ; FO List 1965; Adam Sisman, John le Carré: The Biography; Observer Profile). I have reviewed the Sisman biography here. The very interesting speech he gave at the Olof Palme prize ceremony in Stockholm on 30 January 2020 can be read here.
    The ‘Smiley’ novels:
    Call for the Dead
    A Murder of Quality
    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
    The Looking Glass War
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    The Honourable Schoolboy
    Smiley’s People
    The Secret Pilgrim
    And others by le Carré:
    A Small Town in Germany
    The Mission Song
    The Tailor of Panama
    A Perfect Spy
    Absolute Friends
    Our Game
    he Night Manager
    The Russia House
    The Constant Gardener
    Our Kind of Traitor
    A Legacy of Spies
    Agent Running in the Field
  • Stella Rimington
    Former Director-General of MI5 and first to be publicly named. See her official website and autobiography.
    The Geneva Trap
    Present Danger
    Dead Line
    At Risk
    Illegal Action
    Secret Asset
  • Lawrence Durrell (1912-90)
    Junior Press Officer British Emb Cairo, 1941; Press Attaché at British Information Office, Alexandria, 1942-5; Director of PR, Overseas Information Service on Rhodes, 1945-7; British Council lecturer, Cordoba Argentina, 1947-9; 1st Secretary (Information), British Embassy Belgrade, 1949-52; Press Adviser to British colonial administration in Cyprus, 1954-6.
    Bitter Lemons  Not a novel but the best of what has been described as his ‘foreign residence genre’, this one set in Cyprus as the troubles of the then British colony started in the mid-1950s. The chapter on ‘How to Buy a House’ is a real page-turning account of the negotiating skills employed on Durrell’s behalf by the Turkish Cypriot estate agent (realtor) Sabri Tahir.
    The following slender volumes are the collections of Durrell’s hilarious short stories, narrated through the voice of the fictional diplomat ‘Antrobus’. Justly famous, they were inspired chiefly by Durrell’s time at the British embassy in Belgrade:
    Esprit de Corps: Sketches from Diplomatic Life
    Stiff Upper Lip
    Sauve Qui Peut
    They can also be obtained collected, in whole or in part, in one volume:
    The Best of Antrobus
    Antrobus Complete
  • Olivia Manning (1908-80)
    Married to a British Council lecturer (‘cultural diplomat’). Olivia Manning’s six novels set in Second World War Roumania, Greece, and the Middle East, now collectively known as the Fortunes of War [the Balkan Trilogy plus the Levant Trilogy] and adapted for television in 1987, are regarded as classics. I was interested to see in the very full piece on Manning in Wikipedia that she and her husband lived for a short time in Bucharest in early 1940 with John Hugh (‘Adam’) Watson, 3rd Secretary in the British Legation and later quite a well known writer on diplomacy.
    The Balkan Trilogy
    The Levant Trilogy
    Fortunes of War
  • Alan Judd
    Real name Alan Edwin Petty. Widely believed by spook-watchers to be a former senior officer in MI6, a suspicion I recall forming myself when some years ago I read his Quest for C: Sir Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the British Secret Service (1999). The vagueness of his entries in the Diplomatic Service List between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s is something of a give-away. The only number that says anything about him other than his rank (entering as 2nd Secretary and leaving as Counsellor) and his attachment to the ‘F.C.O.’ is the one that notes his posting as ‘Consul (Economic)’ at the British Consulate-General in Johannesburg in 1980. Hmmm. He made a hit with his first novel, A Breed of Heroes, which appeared shortly after this interlude in South Africa. This piece provides useful background on ‘Alan Judd’ and his many articles in The Spectator can be read here.
    A Breed of Heroes
    Short of Glory
    The Noonday Devil
    Tango
    The Devil’s Own Work
    Legacy
    The Kaiser’s Last Kiss
    Dancing with Eva 
    Uncommon Enemy
    Inside Enemy
  • Anne Telscombe
    Real name Marie Dobbs (née Catton). She was the wife of Joe Dobbs, who served at the British embassy in Moscow for 14 years over four different postings between 1947 and 1974 and was regarded as Britain’s leading Kremlinologist during the Cold War. ‘Anne Telscombe’ was an Australian journalist who fetched up in Moscow and collaborated with Dobbs (then an ‘Information Officer’) on the embassy’s Russian-language weekly, Britansky Soyuznik (The British Ally) until this feared organ of British propaganda was slowly strangled by the Soviet authorities and expired at the end of 1948 (V. O. Pechatnov, ‘The Rise and Fall of Britansky Soyuznik’, Historical Journal, 41(1), 1998). After they married and she could no longer work she took to writing novels based on their postings. I am grateful to Jane Barder for alerting me to this novelist.
    Miss Bagshot Goes to Moscow
    The Listener
    Miss Bagshot Goes to Tibet
  • Charles Cumming
    Cumming had a brief encounter with MI6 when an attempt was made to recruit him  as a young graduate and has since established himself as a leading writer of spy thrillers. I have just finished A Foreign Country, which is a real page-turner. Read more about him here.
    A Spy By Nature
    The Hidden Man
    The Spanish Game
    Typhoon
    The Trinity Six
    A Foreign Country
  • André Brink
    A well known South African novelist.
    The Ambassador
  • Dorothy Dunnett
    The late Dorothy Dunnett was a terrific historical novelist. I preferred the House of Niccolo series, set in Europe in the late fifteenth century and dealing with merchant banking and international political intrigue. They are complicated but quite gripping; best read in the published order as below. See more about the author and her books here.
    ‘The Lymond Chronicles’, published between 1961 and 1975:
    1. The Game of Kings
    2. Queens’ Play
    3. The Disorderly Knights
    4. Pawn in Frankincense
    5. The Ringed Castle
    6. Checkmate
    The ‘House of Niccolo’ series, published between 1986 and 2000:
    1. Niccolò Rising
    2. Spring of the Ram
    3. Race of Scorpions
    4. Scales of Gold
    5. The Unicorn Hunt
    6. To Lie with Lions
    7. Caprice and Rondo
    8. Gemini
  • Paul Theroux
    The London Embassy
  • Philip Kerr
    If you are an admirer of Raymond Chandler, you will like this author. Someone has said that in the tautness of his dialogues and the richness of his similes, he ‘out Chandlers Chandler’. I am a great fan, especially of his novels about the left-leaning Berlin Kripo detective turned private eye in the Nazi period Bernie Gunther, the first three of which are also published collectively under the title ‘Berlin Noir’. These are the nine Bernie Gunther novels:
    1. March Violets
    2. The Pale Criminal
    3. A German Requiem
    Berlin Noir {NB Includes the first 3}
    4. The One From The Other
    5. A Quiet Flame
    6. If The Dead Rise Not
    7. Field Grey
    8. Prague Fatale
    9. A Man Without Breath
  • Mick Herron
    Anything by this brilliant novelist – to whom I have come regrettably late – but especially the five titles in his Jackson Lamb series. Herron rarely writes a dull sentence. You will laugh as well as be thrilled.
  • Alan Furst
    1.   Night Soldiers
    2.   Dark Star 
    3.  The Polish Officer
    4.   The World at Night
    5.   Red Gold
    6.   Kingdom of Shadows
    7.   Blood of Victory
    8.   Dark Voyage
    9.   The Foreign Correspondent
    10. The Spies of Warsaw
    11. Spies of the Balkans
    12. Mission to Paris