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Leigh Turner

Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna

Part of UK in Ukraine

12th December 2010

BBC Book of the Year 2010

The lofty, historic hall of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy is packed with journalists, TV cameras and microphones. The occasion is the prize-giving for the BBC Ukrainian Service Book of the Year Competition.  The prize, worth #1,000, is in my pocket.  Several of the five short-listed authors are present, one via Skype from Washington.  Five distinguished commentators summarise the short-listed novels.  I then announce the winner. It is Sergiy Zhadan for his book “Voroshylovgrad”.

You can read all about the prize, and the competition, at the excellent BBC Ukrainian Service web-site.  So I won’t say much about it here. But congratulations to the BBC for organising such a successful and prestigious competition, and to all the shortlisted authors for producing such terrific and interesting work.

NB you can see a video of the presentation, including my massacring my few words in Ukrainian, here.

About Leigh Turner

I hope you find this blog interesting and, where appropriate, entertaining. My role in Vienna covers the relationship between Austria and the UK as well as the diverse work of…

I hope you find this blog interesting and, where appropriate, entertaining. My role in Vienna covers the relationship between Austria and the UK as well as the diverse work of the UN and other organisations; stories here will reflect that.

About me: I arrived in Vienna in August 2016 for my second posting in this wonderful city, having first served here in the mid-1980s. My previous job was as HM Consul-General and Director-General for Trade and Investment for Turkey, Central Asia and South Caucasus based in Istanbul.

Further back: I grew up in Nigeria, Exeter, Lesotho, Swaziland and Manchester before attending Cambridge University 1976-79. I worked in several government departments before joining the Foreign Office in 1983.

Keen to go to Africa and South America, I’ve had postings in Vienna (twice), Moscow, Bonn, Berlin, Kyiv and Istanbul, plus jobs in London ranging from the EU Budget to the British Overseas Territories.

2002-6 I was lucky enough to spend four years in Berlin running the house, looking after the children (born 1992 and 1994) and doing some writing and journalism.

To return to Vienna as ambassador is a privilege and a pleasure. I hope this blog reflects that.

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