17th July 2025
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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
15th July 2025
International Day of Women in Diplomacy: UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls visit to Geneva
1st May 2025
The UN Commission on the Status of Women: My first visit as UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls
2nd September 2014 London, UK
Wartime in Paris: an Ambassador tweets
Dr Richard Smith reveals an exciting new Twitter project by the FCO Historians In 1914 Sir Francis Bertie held the plum posting in the British Diplomatic Service—the ambassadorship to Paris. Not only did it carry a yearly salary of £11,500 (the Foreign Secretary was paid just £5,000) but the Ambassador also got to live at […]
2nd September 2014 Tripoli, Libya
Croeso – مرحبا بكم في ويلز
Croeso I Gymru – مرحبا بكم في ويلز. في وقت لاحق من هذا الأسبوع، ستنعقد قمة حلف شمال الأطلسي (ناتو) في ويلز. ويعد ذلك أكبر تجمع على الإطلاق للقادة الدوليين في بريطانيا. سيكون موضوع القمة الرئيسي هو “بناء الاستقرار في عالم متغير”. ومن خلال عقد هذه القمة في ويلز، سنتمكن من تسليط الضوء على هذه […]
2nd September 2014 Tripoli, Libya
Croeso – Welcome to Wales
Croeso i Gymru – Welcome to Wales. Later this week, Wales will host the NATO Summit, the largest gathering of international leaders ever to take place in Britain. The theme of the Summit is ‘Building Stability in an Unpredictable World’. By bringing the Summit to Wales, we will be able to shine the global spotlight […]
1st September 2014 Paris, France
Guest blog: Sir Francis Bertie meets Sir John French and Lord Kitchener in Paris
Rummaging in my library, I found the following blog-post left by my predecessor, with remarkable prescience, to be posted exactly 100 years later! It recounts a dramatic meeting that really did take place in the Residence on 1 September 1914 directly related to the conduct of the War, and in which my predecessor took a […]
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1st September 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Keeping TCI as a desination of choice
Running along an almost deserted Grace Bay beach on an August morning, it is hard to believe that we have had a record start for tourism arrivals so far this year. Despite the wide open spaces free of people – which would be unimaginable on many of the Mediterranean’s crowded beaches – Turks and Caicos […]
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1st September 2014 London, UK
User research on the new Chevening application system
Hello there, I’m Phil Buckley, a Digital Transformation Manager at the Foreign Office, and I wanted to tell you about the unusual and fun challenges faced when testing the new application form for the Chevening Scholarship programme. How did we test? Before we started the design of the new system, we were lucky enough to […]
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1st September 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
The 37th Governor and the 1st Governor
HE Dame Marie Bashir, New South Wales’ 37th Governor, reflected warmly on her first predecessor, Admiral Arthur Philip, when she hosted a glittering reception at Government House in Sydney on the 200th anniversary of his death on 31 August. She spoke of the debt that modern Australia owes its founding father. She also commended his personal qualities: […]
29th August 2014 London, UK
Mapping the online conversation of the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict
Maps of the online landscape can provide fascinating insights into how they are connected and how they interact. In my last blog I looked at a few of our Ambassadors’ accounts and found some of the communities that existed amongst their followers. This blog looks at the way maps of the online conversation can help […]
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29th August 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
PM Abbott hails indigenous scholars bound for Oxford
“Even the stones seem to speak to you,” said Tony Abbott, describing Oxford’s ancient college buildings to this year’s Charlie Perkins/Chevening scholars. This sense of place would be very familiar to indigenous people. The Prime Minister takes a very close interest in indigenous matters. And Oxford, where he spent two very happy years as a […]
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29th August 2014 Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
4 days and 99 Friends from the Commonwealth
Our guest blogger this week is Izzah Jomari from the Brunei Economic Dvelopment Board who was nominated for the 33Fifty programme. Read her blog about her unique Commonwealth youth leaders experience. As part of the 2014 Commonwealth Games legacy, a leadership programme was organized for Commonwealth youth leaders aged between 18 to 25. The programme was […]
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