12 November 2017 I record here, belatedly, the death in September of my friend, Sir Brian Barder, former British diplomat and author of one of the best books on diplomacy. There were very good obituaries of him in the British press and to these I added a lengthy personal footnote on the University of [...]
30 August 2017 On 22 August (2017) John Kerr published an article in the London Evening Standard that to all intents and purposes was a clear call for the dismissal of Boris Johnson as British foreign secretary.
(Routledge, 2017), 342pp (incl. index). ISBN: 978-0-415-79245- (hbk); 978-1-315-21170-1 (ebk) This is an original work, meticulously researched, rich in detail, and written in a clear and – here and there – refreshingly pungent style. Soroka is a Russian scholar but at ease in English. The Summer Capitals begins with over 100 pages devoted to a [...]
(Republic of Letters: Dordrecht, 2011) ISBN 9789089790569, pp. 269 incl. index This is the first book of a very promising young historian. Laurence Guymer, who is head of the Department of History at Winchester College and a research associate in the School of History at the University of East Anglia, has produced a biography of [...]
19 July 2017 Even the most cautious headline – ‘previously undisclosed meeting’ – describing the informal conversation between the American and Russian leaders during the dinner for the G20 summiteers and their spouses in early July suggests that it was in some way extraordinary.
10 April 2017 The Trump administration quickly declared its view – almost certainly correct – that the Syrian air force was responsible for the chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northern Syria early last week.
27 March 2017 Don’t you get fed up with the over-use of certain words and phrases?
17 March 2017 The US State Department used to be very good at keeping America’s own diplomatic correspondents abreast of foreign policy developments. It gave daily press briefings
7 March 2017 Once more the House of Lords, the ‘upper’ chamber of the British Parliament, has shown itself to be on the side of common decency, not to mention economic prudence.
5 March 2017 So Boris Johnson, Britain’s diplomatically inept, part-time foreign secretary (his other job is entertainment) is going to Moscow for talks with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
5 March 2017 UN-led prenegotiations for a settlement of the Syrian civil war tragically seem once more to be going nowhere.
10 February 2017 While studying documents on the ‘treaty of friendship’ signed between the State Department and the CIA in 1977, I came across a particularly interesting memo.
31 January 2017 Radical changes of government have in the past often led to tension between the new regime and at least some of the state’s diplomatic servants at foreign posts,
12 January 2017 Published by BuzzFeed here, if this is fake news it was drafted by a master forger.
9 January 2017 ‘Who would want to be a diplomat now? Civil servants are judged as though they are reality TV contestants, while reality TV stars have inherited the Earth.’ So writes one of the Guardian’s sharpest columnists,
(Beaufort Books: New York, 2016), p. 376, incl. index. ISBN 9780825308253 This book tells the story of the vital role played by the US Embassy in Monrovia in helping to mediate an end to the brutal, 14-year civil war in Liberia in 2003. Its successful diplomacy was assisted by a popular yearning for peace, the [...]
9 November 2016 There is sometimes a silver lining to the darkest of clouds, and a case in point in connection with Donald Trump’s election victory might well be the injection of a virus into that sometimes useful but now out-of-control mode of diplomacy, summitry.
(Hart: Oxford and Portland, Oregon, 2016), 493pp. incl. index. ISBN 9781849464369 (hb), ISBN 9781509902781 (Epub). Q: ‘Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington? A: Because there’s no American Embassy there.’ This old joke serves to highlight the belief – entrenched deeply in poor, weak states – that diplomatic missions too often meddle [...]
29 June 2016 The best known short work on diplomacy is still probably Harold Nicolson’s, Diplomacy.
(Bloomsbury: London, 2015). 652 pp. incl. index. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4088-2792-5 TPB: 978-1-4088-2793-2 ePub: 978-1-4088-4944-6[ buy this book ] I thought to review this book because I had enjoyed the spy novels of John le Carré and, having introduced a chapter on secret intelligence into the latest edition of my textbook and mentioned him in it [...]
