31 January, 2026. My latest publication, called Ambassadors, Journalists and Spies: From ancient Greece to the present day, will shortly be available from DiploFoundation. All earnings from its sales will go to this non-profit organization, created in 2002 by the governments of Malta and Switzerland, as an expression of my gratitude for its support for this website over many years. The simplest way for me to explain what the volume is about is to reproduce here its Preface.
Preface
I should begin by saying that I am grateful to Prabhu Guptara for introducing me to the idea of an omnibus publication; that is, one that contains several of an author’s previously published works. I had actually never heard of such a thing before, and always assumed that this nineteenth century term signified only a road vehicle carrying many passengers (‘bus’ being its modern contraction). Anyway, I was attracted to the notion because I had some short works that might be included in a book of this sort, and even more so when I read in the Oxford English Dictionary, citing the Times Literary Supplement, 5 January 1933, that ‘For the author the possibility of becoming popular enough in his lifetime to be omnibused or to omnibus himself with profit may be looked on as a new prize in the race for fame.’
Three of my previously published books are the passengers on this omnibus, presented in chronological order. The first one, The Diplomacy of Ancient Greece: A short introduction, is reproduced here as it appeared on the ISSUU platform under the imprint of DiploFoundation, with just minor tweaks and a few corrections. It is chiefly a work of critical synthesis of secondary sources. By marked contrast, the second one, Diplomacy, Satire and the Victorians: The life and writings of E. C. Grenville-Murray, is based on a great deal of work on primary sources and was previously published in paperback by The Isis Press under the different main title, A Diplomatic Whistleblower in the Victorian Era (Istanbul, 2017). Too broad in girth in its original form even for a double seat on the omnibus, this book has been abridged to an extent enabling it to squeeze in quite comfortably. I have done this by distilling most of the footnotes into a ‘Note on Sources’in the end matter, summarising wherever advantageous to clarity, and deleting a few passages of marginal value. I am grateful to Sinan Kuneralp of The Isis Press for giving his blessing to publication of this abridgement. Diplomacy and Secret Service: A short introduction, having run to jump on the bus, is the final passenger. This is equally a work chiefly of critical synthesis, and has also appeared previously only on the ISSUU platform courtesy of DiploFoundation. This one takes us into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and, unlike the one on the ancient Greeks, has been substantially updated.
With one or two exceptions, URLs are not provided for references accessible on the Web because they are often very long and sometimes die. Instead, an *asterisk against a title indicates that, at the time of writing, it can easily be found online, usually without a paywall.
Each book retains its original preface and other prelims.
Finally, I must express my warmest gratitude to Dina Hrecak, Mina
Mudrić and Sanja Marić for helping me with the Index, as also to Viktor
Mijatović and Aleksandar Nedeljkov for their design and pre-press work.
G. R. B., Leicester, December 2025