The outgoing British ambassador to Lebanon hates the image of diplomats as stuck-up champagne-drinking mandarins, and goes out of his way to prove ...

That sound you hear is the massed ranks of long-departed British ambassadors turning in their graves. Some of us, alive but retired, have had to re ...

The room occupied by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office permanent under-secretary is an intimidating place. Surveying the same St James Park lamps ...

Writing to a friend in April 1776, the future US president John Adams suggested that the best form of government was one "which communicates e ...

In some ways, Twitter is simply a return to the lively political debate of the Roman forum. Seven years ago, I produced a set of guidelines for ...

What do we know about one of the best-known unknown people in Downing Street?   As a Whitehall mandarin who has spent years shunning t ...

Diplomats hate making predictions. This is partly because we hate to be wrong. It is partly because we don’t know as much as we pretend to. I ...