8th November 2017 Vienna, Austria
The youngest of the four men is 82. He left when he was four years old. The oldest is 98. They cheerfully sign autographs and chat about their experiences. I’m at the launch in Vienna of a terrific book: Vienna – London: Passage to Safety: Emigré portraits in photographs and words, edited by Austrian photographer […]
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6th November 2017 Vienna, Austria
The pictures are grisly. A black rhino lies slumped, its head a mass of blood and gore. A rotting elephant carcass is hunched in the savannah, torn and ripped by scavengers. #ICYMI @BrentStirton named #WPY53 Wildlife Photographer of the Year for the powerful Memorial to a species. #rhino #photography @NHM_WPY pic.twitter.com/qM1fmF0scf — NHM Images (@NHM_Images) […]
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3rd November 2017 Vienna, Austria
One year ago, I attended with my mother a concert in Vienna by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. It was a sombre occasion. The concert had been due to be conducted by the founder of the Academy, Sir Neville Marriner, aged 92. But tragically, the great musician had died in his sleep, […]
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31st October 2017 Vienna, Austria
A bloke in a leather jacket stands on a sunny railway platform, looking forward to starting a new job. Excited to be on my way from Salzburg today to take up my posting in #Vienna pic.twitter.com/S4oSK0J1TJ — Leigh Turner (@LeighTurnerFCO) August 27, 2016 I started as British Ambassador to Vienna and UK Permanent Representative to […]
19th October 2017 Vienna, Austria
The tunnel is steep: I clutch a rope and lower myself towards an aluminium ladder below. Water drips, gathering in pools. Yet when I reach the bottom, a beautifully-carved stone passageway curves around a corner. The tunnels and menhirs of eastern Styria (Steiermark) are remarkable. According to the research body Sub Terra Vorau, around 790 […]
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4th October 2017 Vienna, Austria
Since starting my posting as Ambassador in Vienna in September 2016, I have had the pleasure of visiting almost every Austrian state, from Vorarlberg to Lower Austria. Along the way, I have met dozens of businesses, including importers of British products to Austria, and Austrian companies with a significant presence in the UK. I have […]
26th September 2017 Vienna, Austria
I was in the flea-market at the Naschmarkt in Vienna in 1984 when I saw for sale a broken mechanical wall-calendar. With its black, white and gold decoration, it looked like something between Jugendstil (Austrian art nouveau) and Italian Futurism – I was reminded of a work by Umberto Boccioni in The Tate Modern. Further […]
20th September 2017 Vienna, Austria
When I was posted to Vienna in the 1980s, one of my unofficial roles at parties where foreigners were present was, as a German speaker, to go to the door when the police arrived to ask us to turn the music down. The police often arrived at 22.00 after receiving complaints from the neighbours. Generally […]
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14th September 2017 Vienna, Austria
On 14 September the UK joins others in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the formation of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, known as the UNODC. The UNODC was set up in 1997 from a merger between the UN’s Drug Control Programme and the UN’s Centre for International Crime Prevention. Today, the UNODC’s work […]
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11th September 2017 Vienna, Austria
This summer, the British Embassy in Vienna has been running a competition on Instagram (do follow!). Our theme: the UK and Austria. We received 167 fantastic entries. You can see them on Instagram by searching with the hashtag #UKinAustria. After a Stakhanovite effort, with a team of us striving to decide between numerous powerful pictures, […]