2nd December 2025
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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
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Lost and Found (but mostly lost)
13th October 2025
UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls: September visits to Sarajevo and New York
29th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Unsung Heroine
A few weeks ago, I was asked to try to locate the grave of Eileen Harewood. She was Matron at the Princess Tsahai Hospital in #Addis and had been in Ethiopia for 14 years when she was found murdered in her quarters on 12 September 1961, aged 51. According to the #Glasgow Herald of 17 […]
29th December 2014 Havana, Cuba
Cuba’s ageing population – lessons from around the world
Cuba’s ageing population is widely-acknowledged as a serious problem. Marino Murillo, now Minister for the Economy, has described it as a ‘colossal challenge for the nation’. The bare facts are: in 2021 more people will leave the labour force than will join, in 2026 more Cubans will die than will be born and the number […]
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29th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Revisiting Romania
During a visit to London last month I headed to the delightfully quirky Horniman Museum at Forest Hill, where curator Fiona Kerlogue gave me a tour of the Revisiting Romania exhibition, on show since October. The exhibition offers a beautiful display of Romanian folk art, from embroidered sheepskin jackets to the intricately carved distaffs often […]
29th December 2014 Sofia, Bulgaria
2014 – Celebrating Friendship between Britain and Bulgaria
by His Excellency the British Ambassador to Bulgaria Jonathan Allen When we began this year with the intention to mark the centenary of the Ambassador’s Residence, we could not have imagined how successful and interesting our year would be. Amongst the many events that we planned, the most successful and most interesting has been our blog. Just […]
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26th December 2014 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Searching for Maya
For our final blog in our#TsunamiRemembered series, we turn to fiction, sometimes the best way to make sense of facts. Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe is the author of Rhythm of the Sea and Trinity. Her 2011 book of poetry, There’s an Island in the Bone won the 2011 State Literary Joint Award for poetry. She was longlisted for […]
25th December 2014 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Waves of Compassion
In our penultimate #TsunamiRemembered blog, Tesco, the MCC, an ancestral home and overwhelming compassion come together to help rural talent shine. Kushil Gunasekera describes his vision for Foundation of Goodness. I was born in the rural village of Seenigama, but educated in Colombo, and was always determined to bridge the gap between the rural and […]
24th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Remembering
At the end of the year, most of us take time to look back and remember. This brings a mix of thoughts and emotions. For me, it is particularly appropriate as we reach the end of 2014. This Friday 26th December I will be in Phang Nga Province to take part in the Remembrance Ceremony […]
24th December 2014 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Through Hell and High Water: the drivers’ story
This morning we held a short memorial in the office to remember those whose lives were taken away or damaged by the tsunami, and those who worked so tirelessly and generously to rebuild Sri Lanka. So it seems appropriate for our eighth blog to tell the stories of five long term members of British High […]
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23rd December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Recharging the batteries
Today, I will be flying home to the UK for Christmas to join Caroline and the children, who are already there. It will be my first proper visit home since I arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in July, and I’m looking forward to catching up with family and friends. Looking back through my diary, […]
23rd December 2014 Sofia, Bulgaria
Reminiscences of Bulgaria
by Andrew Bache Andrew Bache hadn’t always intended to join the diplomatic service and working for the Foreign Office wasn’t his intention in his early years. But having worked for a large accountancy company, he decided that accountancy wasn’t really his calling and felt himself drawn to the work at Foreign Office. His job there eventually […]