17th July 2025
Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
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
25th April 2013 Houston, USA
Out of the Lab and into the Living Room
Can you name a living scientist? If you are reading this ‘Partners in Science’ blog, it is likely you can. Unfortunately, a ‘Research! America’ survey conducted in 2011 says that only 34 per cent of Americans can actually name a living scientist. As someone who works everyday with scientists who are doing some truly revolutionary […]
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25th April 2013 Washington DC, USA
Celebrating Happy Feet
Today, I dressed up in black and white in solidarity with my dearest feathered, slithery and loud-mouthed friends, Penguins. Today is World Penguin day (no offense taken if you were not informed), celebrating the many millions of happy-feet who accumulate impressive mileage swimming around the coldest parts of the southern hemisphere. I became a fan […]
25th April 2013 New Delhi, India
India-UK IP framework now available
The new India-UK Intellectual Property (IP) Toolkit has been launched and all of the documents are available here. Details on our journey to this launch are available on my earlier blog. The aim of this toolkit is to provide guidance and examples of agreements to support IP negotiations in bilateral R&D partnerships. This is an […]
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25th April 2013 London, UK
My CSCLeaders Conference Experience
In an earlier blog I described the Commonwealth as “the world’s first social network”, and Bruneians as amongst its most savvy practitioners. You’ll see what I mean in this guest blog by Helen Yeo, one of two professional Bruneian women who are representing the Sultanate in the CSCLeaders programme, in London, Manchester, Oxford, Mumbai – […]
25th April 2013 Bucharest, Romania
Focus group on Europe: the take from Chevening alumni
This afternoon I will be conducting a focus group with a number of Chevening alumni from a variety of professional backgrounds (press, law, trade, political) to discuss how they perceive UK as a partner in the EU. I look forward to a two-hour long discussion, and hope at the end of it we come up […]
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24th April 2013 British High Commission, Kingston, Jamaica
Locate and Engage …
Over the past few weeks, the British High Commission in Kingston Jamaica has done quite alot of work on Chevening Scholarships and with our Chevening Alumni. We are in the very final stages of our 12 week “Chevening Alumni Location and Engagement Project” for both Jamaica and the Bahamas, which saw us identifying, making contact […]
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 […]