20th August 2013 Havana, Cuba
It’s exactly a year to the day since I arrived in Havana. When I stepped off the plane 365 days’ ago, it was my first time in Cuba, I knew a little but not a lot about the country and, after a recent posting in Mozambique, my Spanish had a very Portuguese twang. A year later and I […]
21st June 2013 Havana, Cuba
I didn’t see any tulips in Santa Clara but this week the town had a very Dutch flavour. Most of the people I met there on Monday were wearing orange, a colour which the local baseball team, Villa Clara, shares with the Dutch national football team. This week Villa Clara finally won the Cuban baseball […]
11th June 2013 Havana, Cuba
Last week in Havana we saw a fantastic celebration of British culture. Once a year, as in many other countries in the world, the Embassy organises a BritWeek when we put on a variety of events. In Havana our cinema programme included the Cuban-British film, The Day of the Flowers. Obra Blue/Orange, put on by British director […]
31st May 2013 Havana, Cuba
I’m the British Ambassador to Cuba and I’ve decided to start this blog. The idea is to write about the United Kingdom and Cuba, everything that joins them together and one or two things that separate them. Of course, the British Embassy in Havana already uses lots of digital platforms for communication – for example, […]
30th July 2012
All British ambassadors work with human rights defenders. As the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has said: “Human rights are part of our national DNA and will be woven into the decision making processes of our foreign policy”. I have written previously about our work with people and organisations trying to prevent the trade in human […]
3rd October 2011 Geneva, Switzerland
As the September session of the Human Rights Council drew to a close on Friday, there were some glum faces around, especially amongst the NGOs. The NGOs provide a much needed reality check to the rest of us and I think it’s a fair criticism that civil servants are often all too ready to point […]
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