13th November 2016 Colombo, Sri Lanka
On Friday 11 November, we held our usual ceremony for Remembrance Day. The Commonwealth War Graves enclosure of the Liveramentu cemetery on Torrington Road was as serene as ever. The headstones are a startling white against the immaculate green grass. The tropical sun beats down. Birdsong fills the two minute silence. The reading from Kenny […]
22nd July 2016 London, UK
Mention Australia or New Zealand and the First World War together and the first association is Gallipoli. It is right that we remember the sacrifices made at Gallipoli, but the story of both forces in the First World War did not end there. The Australian Imperial Force (AIF) actually did the majority of its fighting […]
26th April 2016 Beirut, Lebanon
Yesterday I participated in an ANZAC ceremony for the first time: a moving dawn service led by Australian Ambassador Glenn Miles to commemorate the fallen of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) in the battle of Gallipoli, 1915. This tragic battle helped forge the modern countries of Australia and New Zealand. There was […]
2nd December 2015
Last week the embassy organised a seminar as part of the ‘Soft Skills in Hard Times. Remembering the Service of Great Romanian and British Women’ project. Entitled ‘Nothing Quiet on the Eastern and Western Fronts’, the event aimed to focus on the work of Romanian and British women in promoting peace, security and humanitarian support. Guest […]
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27th November 2015
In the first of this video blog series, my Deputy Head of Mission, Adam Sambrook, shares his views on using soft skills in the context of climate change negotiations. The series is part of the project ‘Soft Skills in Hard Times. Remembering the Service of Great Romanian and British Women,’ which aims to both commemorate […]
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12th March 2015 Paris, France
In this guest blog, Colonel Geoff Wright, Military Attaché at the British Embassy in Paris, pays tribute to the British and Indian soldiers who died in the battle of Neuve-Chapelle in the North of France.
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8th December 2014 Paris, France
I’m really proud that the British Council team here in Paris have been leading the campaign with the Council to remember the football truce, that extraordinary moment around Christmas of 1914 when British and German soldiers got out of their trenches around Ypres (but we think also in some areas in France) and ended up […]
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11th November 2014 Budapest, Hungary
I’ve blogged before about Remembrance Day: the day when we in the UK remember those who have died defending our country and our values. Every year at this time we honour and remember them and their sacrifice. But this year our commemoration has been particularly poignant since 2014 is the centenary of the start of […]
5th November 2014
Pope Francis often talks of the need for priests to take risks, to get out into the streets, to live the message of the Gospel. This week I met a group of people who are living witnesses to just such an approach – descendants, relatives and friends of Msgr Hugh O’Flaherty, Major Sam Derry, and […]
1st September 2014 Paris, France
Rummaging in my library, I found the following blog-post left by my predecessor, with remarkable prescience, to be posted exactly 100 years later! It recounts a dramatic meeting that really did take place in the Residence on 1 September 1914 directly related to the conduct of the War, and in which my predecessor took a […]
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