UK in Uzbekistan

Last week I spoke to members of the diplomatic course at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy about the British approach to protocol. I have twice worked in jobs directly responsible for protocol work – once when I revised the Foreign Office’s protocol guidance, to make it easier to read and to change things […]

On Friday the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) published the first part of their fifth Assessment Report on climate change. The Assessment Reports are a summary of the best available scientific knowledge, and are each divided into three parts: on the physical science basis; on impacts of climate change, vulnerabilities, and means of […]

I visited the Ferghana valley for the first time at the end of last week which means, I think, that I have been in all the viloyats of Uzbekistan except for Surkhandarya. I’ll try to get there before the end of the year. My first impression of the Valley was the contrast between the arid […]

On Sunday I set off out of Tashkent to find the ancient city of Kanka, which the UNESCO website describes as “unique as a monument of history and human culture and the town-planning history of Uzbekistan, and included in the list of ten great sites of ancient cities of Central Asia”. It isn’t really a […]

British people are famous for talking about the weather. But last week and the week before nobody in Tashkent seemed to be talking about anything else, with temperatures in the forties, and records being broken in Samarkand and elsewhere. The Ministry for Emergency Situations sent out, apparently for the first time ever, text messages with […]

Recently I travelled to London to attend the annual Foreign Office Leadership Conference, which brings together the heads of our diplomatic posts from around the world, and senior officials based in London. It’s a chance to discuss the big issues that are facing all of us, and to hear from Foreign Office ministers and ministers […]

I visited Muynak recently with a senior representative of the British parliament. I’d read a lot about the Aral Sea, since the 1980s when I first worked on Soviet issues (as they were then). It’s one of those things – not by any means unique to the former Soviet Union – that illustrates humanity’s ability […]

Last week the orchestra of the Tashkent Conservatoire performed an evening of British music, sponsored by mining company Rio Tinto. My colleague Lottie Waller joined the orchestra for the occasion, and blogs below about her experience. On 22 May I played the ‘cello in the student orchestra of Uzbekistan’s State Conservatoire, with around 75 of […]