3rd December 2024
RENEWING OLD TIES: THE NEW BISHOP OF LONDON
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
25th November 2024
The climate crisis and gender-based violence
8th November 2024
Ecolabels: A Catalyst for Sustainable Food Choices?
24th April 2013 Calgary, Canada
Knowledge is GREAT: engaging Alberta’s future leaders
Students these days have it easy. I remember when I graduated from Calgary’s Mount Royal University not so long ago, things were different. Sure, I knew that a British Consul-General was coming to Calgary, but he wasn’t interested in hearing my opinion… was he?
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24th April 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
How Anglo is Australia?
This was the interesting title I was asked to talk about by the NSW Community Relations Commission. In Parramatta, unofficial capital of Sydney’s sprawling Western Suburbs, home to some 10% of Australia’s population and the heartland of the “new Australians”, I met young leaders from a range of different communities: Iraqi, Afghanistani, Indian, Coptic Christians […]
23rd April 2013 New York, USA
Brush Up Your Shakespeare
It is fitting that St. George’s Day, England’s national day, should coincide with the birthday of William Shakespeare, Britain’s greatest cultural icon. Despite his surviving works’ totalling fewer than a million words – making the whole kit and caboodle only three-quarters the length of Proust’s tome – they are the pillars of the language and […]
23rd April 2013 Beirut, Lebanon
Lebanon’s Gas: Blessing or Curse?
I spoke this week at a conference on Lebanon’s gas sector. Interest in the subject is rightly high. This could be one of the largest gas finds anywhere in the world in the last decade. It could pave the way to a Lebanese renaissance – to Beirutopia. It could be the basis for a gas peace dividend in […]
23rd April 2013 Ottawa, Canada
Science in Shakespeare’s time
In anticipation of William Shakespeare’s 449th birthday, our Science and Innovation team decided to pay homage to the most celebrated poet and playwright in history. Brimming with the “stuff as dreams are made on”, Shakespeare’s plays have captivated readers throughout the ages. Although his plays have had a spellbinding effect on their readers, we can’t […]
23rd April 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
“God for Harry! England and Saint George!”
We are hosting our Queen’s Birthday Party today, for many of our valued partners. And since it is 23rd April, we are at the same time marking the day of Saint George in many parts of the world, but also the anniversary of the birth and death of a great Englishman William Shakespeare. The standard of […]
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23rd April 2013 Dublin, Ireland
Seventieth Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
19 April marked the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This was an extraordinary demonstration of heroism by a small group of Jewish resistance fighters against overwhelming odds. For nearly a month, they held out against some 2000 German soldiers with heavy weapons. Remarkably, a small group of the resistance fighters survived. The commemoration […]
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23rd April 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
The heart of India’s largest business – brimming with wide streets and parks
A number of the Tata Group’s top executives have said that you can’t understand their Group until you have visited Jamshedpur. I confess at first I had little idea where the place was, but after a warm invitation from Messrs Muthuraman and Nerurkar, Vice Chairman and Managing Director respectively of Tata Steel, I soon found out […]
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23rd April 2013 Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Earth Day
Yesterday, 22 April, was Earth Day – since 1970 a day of events around the world to “acknowledge the amazing planet we call home and take action to protect it”. I spoke in the morning to students at the National University of Uzbekistan about the British government’s response, domestically and internationally, to the challenges of […]
21st April 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Focus on Darfur
Last week I spent a couple of days in Doha for the donors’ conference on Darfur. The conference provided an opportunity for the international community to gather with the Government of Sudan and the Darfur Regional Authority (DRA) to consider how to tackle the next stages of development in Darfur. There was a lot of […]