25th October 2013
I hadn’t realised, but I’d passed the site many times before. It’s hidden on the side of a slope at a road junction. The memorial is in a pit where 5,000 Jewish prisoners were shot on 2nd March 1942. This week was the 70th anniversary of the liquidation of the Minsk Ghetto, and the pit […]
18th October 2013
They could have gone better. Despite taking exams for many years, I still managed to get irritated with myself. I forgot a word that I had learnt only a week or so before. I had let the stress of doing my Russian language exam get to me. I should have known better. Just before my […]
20th September 2013
Like every good organisation, we (the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) constantly seek to improve. As part of that effort, we continually compare ourselves to the foreign ministries of other countries. We tend to focus on the Ministère des Affaires étrangères of France, or the “Quai d’Orsay”, after the street where the ministry is based. As […]
6th September 2013
What are your thoughts on the concept of intelligentsia? – Alena Belausava Alena: thank you for your question. I liked it because it sparked my curiosity. I wondered if we have a similar term. So I had a brief splash around in the shallows of the internet to research the idea. I’ve come up with […]
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23rd August 2013
Why is there a huge passion for parks, gardens and lawns in Britain? – Eugene Petrashkevich Dear Eugene: thank you for your question – I’ve simplified it from your original version. I understood your question as asking why we have gardens and parks for pleasure, rather than for necessity (to grow vegetables and fruit to eat). […]
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16th August 2013
“How do diplomats behave if they get annoyed with a person during negotiations? Is it possible for diplomats to show their feelings or is there some technique they use to switch emotions?” — Lika Akubardia Dear Lika: thank you for your questions – and for all of those who responded to our competition. I hope to […]
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2nd July 2013
I’ve discovered that I might have a tendency to “Gladwellian” prose, as practised by Malcolm Gladwell, a Canadian-British journalist who wrote “The Tipping Point”. This is the reduction of complicated issues into simple terms. I came across the term while reading a critique of the “plain and clear language” of George Orwell in the New […]
25th June 2013
When I took on this job, I didn’t expect to be writing about G8* summits. But I was asked to speak to an audience by the Institute of Certified Financial Managers, and I was wondering what to say. Like many of my fellow bloggers, I turned to the G8 Summit which we were about to […]
18th June 2013
I spend some of my time considering the state of civil society in Belarus, as a measure of the political and social health of the country. Is it flourishing? Does it have “space” to grow? Is the government responding to the concerns raised by civil society? I’m struck by how elusive it is to define […]
11th June 2013
It’s all over – the European football season ended on 25th May with the Champions league final at Wembley Stadium in north-west London. Wembley was the right place for the final, as Britain gave the “beautiful game” of football to the rest of the world. We set out the rules in 1863 that eventually became […]