27th November 2015 Chennai, India
Today I celebrate 20 years in the Foreign Office. I joined, like many others, because I wanted to see the world and be a part of something that mattered. I remember during the induction a colleague who was less awed by the surroundings asking how long it would take to get promoted (answer 12 years if […]
28th September 2015 Skopje, North Macedonia
The UK Civil Service doesn’t have an official motto – but if it did, it would almost certainly be: “speak truth unto power”. It’s a maxim that’s in the blood of good civil servants, even if they know that it won’t make their lives any easier. The best politicians learn to cherish civil service advice […]
14th September 2015 Stockholm, Sweden
Welcome, Bienvenue, Välkomna and Hoşgeldiniz to the new blog for the Science & Innovation Network in Europe! We are a diverse group of 22 officers working on science and innovation out of UK Embassies and Consulates across Europe, Russia and Turkey. We report on science and innovation policy developments in our respective countries and run […]
7th September 2015 Skopje, North Macedonia
If you ever you get the chance to speak to students at the Preparing Global Leaders Institute (PGLI) course, snap it up. Few weeks ago I was back in Struga, on the shores of Lake Ohrid in Macedonia’s sun-blessed south, to do just that. Actually, any opportunity to speak with a group of students is […]
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17th August 2015
One of the quirks of being posted to the Holy See is that it is one of the few in the world where Ambassador and Deputy Head of Mission regularly have to wear diplomatic uniforms. It comes as a surprise to many that the Foreign Office has a uniform at all – unless they had […]
1st July 2015
This is a networked world. And yet there are few genuinely global networks out there. By that I mean networks that have a capacity to operate globally, co-ordinated centrally but operating in capillary fashion, horizontally in a radial pattern as well as vertically in a hub and spoke model. One of the reasons why we […]
24th June 2015
Confrontation across ideological fault lines. Division in Europe. Pessimism about international affairs. You might think I am referring to today’s international situation. But in fact I would like you to cast your mind back forty years to 1975 and the Cold War. Under the cloud of mutually assured destruction, Europe and the wider world needed […]
17th June 2015 Ottawa, Canada
Right across the globe, diplomats, citizens, scientists, artists and policy-makers are gathering and speaking with unanimity: climate change is a real challenge…
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11th May 2015 Geneva, Switzerland
Grahame Greene’s novel about Geneva ignores it, focusing instead on the nasty foibles of the very rich. And if they mention it at all, modern novelists writing about Geneva use the UN at best as a backdrop for international intrigue but more often as a metaphor for international impotence. For someone preparing to take up […]
21st April 2015 Paris, France
In this guest blog, Deputy Head of Mission Kara Owen discusses what it is to be a modern diplomat, after a talk at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) in Paris.