3rd December 2024 Belgrade, Serbia
I recently had the honour of accompanying His Holiness Patriarch Porfirije back to the UK. It was for a special reason. The Serbian Orthodox Church has created a new diocese of Great Britain and Ireland. On Sunday 24 November, my friend Bishop kyr Nektarije was enthroned as the first Serbian Bishop of London. The enthronement […]
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8th April 2020 Belgrade, Serbia
Since the world became aware of the new deadly coronavirus (COVID19) spreading rapidly among the population of a Chinese province, governments around the world have been planning and preparing to deal with its expected effects. But few people can have anticipated the scale of devastation and disruption that this virus would soon be bringing to […]
6th November 2018 Skopje, North Macedonia
“He lay out upon a precipitous hillside, under the light of a waning moon. It was very quiet; the guns, active throughout the night, were now dumb. On either side of him, in a silence only broken by their heavy breathing, the men of the battalion lay prone along a series of tape lines, laid […]
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11th November 2016 Skopje, North Macedonia
Early October 1918 Corporal George Henry Carter, M2/130656 of the 880th Motor Transport Convoy, Army Service Corps writes to his wife Minnie. His letter, written and indeed read with hope and optimism speaks of change. He confirms an Armistice had been reached with the Bulgarians; ‘…the Germans are about done too, So I am looking […]
28th April 2015 Colombo, Sri Lanka
On Saturday 25 April, I laid a wreath at the Borella Kanatta Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Colombo, at one of the two events organised that day by the Australian High Commission to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Allied landings at Gallipoli during the First World War. It was an opportunity to reflect again […]
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21st October 2014
The new £40m WW1 galleries at the Imperial War Museum in London are absolutely spectacular. I was fortunate to be given a private tour during my visit to London last week, when I met IWM Director Diane Lees and discussed the museum’s plans to send a WW1 exhibition to Melbourne next year. The path through […]
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4th August 2014 Islamabad, Pakistan
This is my first blog for the High Commission and a quick look at the archives tells me that it’s the first time in a long time that a member of the Defence Team has rolled up his sleeves and ‘put fingers to keyboard’. So when Alison Blake, our Deputy High Commissioner, asked me to […]
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