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What is it really like to be a diplomat? Bill Cordiner's 28 years in the Service explodes many myths and shows a rich, varied, even dangerous but never dull experience shot through with the unexpected and even hilarious. These are travelers' tales as much as diplomatic memoirs and begin in Saigon during the Vietnam War, with an encounter with the Viet Cong. Later postings included Ethiopia shortly after the fall of Haile Selassie, where he was buried under tons of coffee and was host to Princess Anne at a bush campsite, in oil-rich Kuwait in sharp contrast to his next posting in Iraq. From Antigua at independence he was thrown into US business life with Boeing and then to near-feudal Tonga.
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The Diplomatic Service commonly invokes the idea of a cultured and trained elite representing Britain abroad, high politics, the cocktail party round and, in times of crisis, appearing in the media to enlighten, warn and assure. But what is it really like to be a diplomat? Bill Cordiner's 28 years in the Service explodes many myths and shows a rich, varied, even dangerous experience shot through with the unexpected and often hilarious. These are travellers' tales as much as diplomatic memoirs which range from experiences in Saigon during the Vietnam War, including an encounter with the Viet Cong, to being buried under tons of coffee in Ethiopia, to negotiating with Boeing, to living through a cyclone in near-feudal Tonga. Diplomatic postings were interspersed with extensive travels through the developing world - including the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific - and Bill Cordiner here shows the rich variety of these experiences: from cyclones and cockroaches to cucumber sandwiches.
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