15th November 2012
Every once in a while you have one of those moments you know you’ll remember for a long time. Hearing Simon and Garfunkel in Hyde Park, or Elton John in Madison Square Garden are two musical examples. In football, I will never forget being in the Stade de France when my school mate John Collins […]
Read more on Meeting new friends at the Friends Arena | Reply
31st October 2012
Being an Ambassador involves many different experiences. Going to see the new James Bond film was exhilarating, but even better was meeting members of the Swedish Paralympic team from London 2012 last Friday night. I’ve written in this space before about the spirit of the Paralympics, but to meet the individuals who embody it was […]
16th October 2012
Yesterday, a friend here in Sweden ordered a pram on-line. The best price was from a French company. The site (albeit in French only) helpfully gave a price for delivery to Sweden. But it proved impossible to register as a customer outside France. She put “Sweden” in the comment box and pressed send. And the […]
8th October 2012
An appropriate issue to blog about on the day a British biologist, Sir John Gurdon, wins the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Sir John’s research on nuclear transfer in frogs in 1962 shattered the dogma that cells only develop in one direction – from young cells to mature cells. He showed that differentiated or […]
3rd October 2012
Britain’s future relationship with the EU is a subject of constant debate. This week our Minister for Europe, David Lidington, has been in Stockholm, addressing the challenges the EU faces. He had good meetings with Carl Bildt and Birgitta Ohlsson. In a talk at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs he stressed that for all […]
Read more on Challenges facing Europe: A British view | Reply
12th September 2012
You can tell the Autumn season has started as an Ambassador when the steady stream of official visitors to Stockholm resumes. Last week I hosted the Head of the UK Civil Service, who was here to see what an Embassy does, not just to support the UK Foreign Office, but to help the work of […]
28th August 2012
Older readers, i e those of you who were around at the end of last year, may remember my blog in The Local where I wrote about how the Paralympics are returning to the country where the concept of organised, competitive disability sport really started. On 29 August, sixty-four years after the first disability sport […]