26th February 2026

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26th February 2026

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6th March 2013 Paris, France

This week on the 8th of March, it’s International Women’s Day, and we are very active in the Embassy in celebrating it. There are two events in particular that I’ve been personally engaged with – and I bring to this a very passionate belief that organisations are better when we have more women in senior […]
5th March 2013
I often host or attend events where we begin by saying that the discussion is based on “Chatham House Rules”, ie any comments made cannot be attributed to individuals outside of the meeting. So it was a great pleasure to host a visit by Lord Williams, the leading Asia scholar from Chatham House (London’s Royal […]
5th March 2013 Lima, Peru
By Cariño Ramos (Plan International) Women represent more than 50% (292 million) of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean, and of that total, more than 104 million are under the age of 19. Young and teenage girls are a particularly vulnerable group in society because of their gender and age. Plan International recently […]
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5th March 2013 Ottawa, Canada
As you may remember, on January 24th, 2013, the Montreal Consulate General (@UKinCanada and @BritsAuCanada), in collaboration with McGill (@McGillU), the Royal Society (@royalsociety) and the Royal Society of Canada (@RSCTheAcademies), hosted a round table on women in Science. Well, the Footage is in and edited and now we can offer you a quick video recap of our Women in Science event: […]
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5th March 2013 Warsaw, Poland
An inspirational speech by HMA Robin Barnett kicked of the recent UKTI Leadership training in Warsaw, part of a two city roadshow from Berlin to Warsaw attracting participation from Heads of UKTI in Europe and the Corporate UKTI training team. The intensive training session is part of UKTIs ongoing change programme to promote UK growth […]
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4th March 2013 British High Commission, Kingston, Jamaica
In the lead up to International Women’s Day, we are featuring the stories of women who work with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Meet Heather Cowley – she’s a Rapid Deployment Team and Cryptographic Support Officer who provides invaluable technical expertise to keep our FCO IT systems secure and enable our diplomats to keep in […]
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4th March 2013
Benedict XVI has stepped down. We await the election of his successor. But life and business at the Holy See, at least for this Embassy, go on – almost as usual. On 1 March, St David’s day, I attended and chaired the afternoon session of a one day conference organised by the Tony Blair Faith […]
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4th March 2013 Geneva, Switzerland

It’s not often that you go to an event at the UN and end up staying much longer than intended. Usually it’s the other way round. But this week’s high level panel on the ‘power of empowered women’ was one of the best UN discussions I’ve seen and a fitting prelude to international women’s day […]
4th March 2013
I was privileged at the weekend to be interviewed on Kanal 24 by well-known Turkish journalist Özay Şendir (in Turkish). We covered lots of topics including use of social media, Cappadocia, trade and investment, freedom of expression and, inevitably, football (my Istanbul team, by the way, is Kasımpaşa). http://youtu.be/Th9Lk78tdjo
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3rd March 2013
Avalon is not just the title of a 1980s Roxy Music album. It’s also an airport in Melbourne which hosts an important aerospace and defence show every two years. That’s quite fitting really as, in Arthurian legend, Avalon is the mythical place where King Arthur’s sword Excalibur was forged, so the name has a longstanding […]
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