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8th December 2014 Paris, France
#FootballRemembers: commemorating the Christmas Truce in 1914
I’m really proud that the British Council team here in Paris have been leading the campaign with the Council to remember the football truce, that extraordinary moment around Christmas of 1914 when British and German soldiers got out of their trenches around Ypres (but we think also in some areas in France) and ended up […]
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8th December 2014 Havana, Cuba
Mariel – building for the future
I was pleased to be able to visit Cuba’s new ‘Special Development Zone’ in Mariel recently. Mariel is a central element in the Cuban government’s plan to attract more much-needed foreign investment and seeing it first-hand is something I have wanted to do for a while. Several British businessmen, interested in investing in Cuba, have […]
8th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/Rupert Wolfe Murray: ‘ROMANIA: Memories of a Revolution’
‘Romania’s “televised revolution” was the most exciting event of 1989, that momentous year when country after country fell out of the crushing embrace of the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall provided the main drama of that year and the revolutions in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the other central European countries were smooth […]
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8th December 2014 Sofia, Bulgaria
In the Ambassador’s Office in the 1960s
by Christine Day Christine Day is daughter of the first British Ambassador to Bulgaria Sir William Harpham. Christine was a special guest at this year’s Queen’s Birthday Party that took place on 12 June 2014 – same as in 1964 when Sir William Harpham hosted his first Queen’s Birthday Party as British Ambassador to Bulgaria. Visiting from the Treasury, Nick Jordan […]
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8th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
UK and Australia – a reinvigorated relationship
I was invited to give the Christmas lecture to the distinguished Australian Institute of International Affairs Victoria in Melbourne last week. It was an opportunity to reflect on the reinvigorated bilateral relationship, in which I have been privileged to play a small part over the last four years. You can read my speech here. I […]
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6th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Easier airport entry for regular Australian travellers to UK
Coming through immigration at Heathrow and Gatwick just got easier for regular Australian travellers. When PM David Cameron was here last month he announced that the Registered Traveller scheme was being extended to Australia and a handful of other countries. What this means is that Australians who have visited the UK more than four times […]
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5th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA
Next Wednesday is the 64th World Human Rights Day. While Bosnia and Herzegovina has achieved important progress in a number of areas, it still has a long way to go to provide all of its citizens with their basic rights and dignities. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights is the right to […]
5th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/Dennis Deletant: ‘Revisiting the 1989 Romanian Revolution: Some Personal Reflections’ (chapter II)
Continued from 04 December ‘I have recounted this incident in an effort to give some sense of the atmosphere reigning in Bucharest in the immediate aftermath of Ceauşescu’s overthrow. Paranoia, mistrust, uncertainty about the future, a glut of firearms in circulation, some in the hands of young men fired by machismo, who had little idea […]
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5th December 2014 Sofia, Bulgaria
Around Bulgaria
by Selby Martin Selby Martin was Head of Chancery and Consul, a position later renamed as Deputy Head of Mission, at British Embassy Sofia in the early 1970s. Our main pastime was travelling round Bulgaria enjoying its magnificent scenery, the churches, monasteries and historic towns. I had taken fishing tackle with me and hoped to fish […]
5th December 2014 Singapore
The Importance of Web Science
In November we hosted a Distinguished Visitor Lecture by Dame Wendy Hall at the High Commissioner’s residence, Eden Hall. Anna Weston, a PhD student at the Web Science Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Southampton, kindly wrote a guest post about the event and the importance of web science: “From the beginning, Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s […]