Ever the Diplomat: Confessions of a Foreign Office Mandarin

In this entertaining and engaging memoir, former ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles lifts the lid on embassy life throughout the world. For over thirty years Sherard Cowper-Coles was on the diplomatic front line in a career that took him from the corridors of power in Whitehall to a string of high-profile posts around the world. Entering the Foreign Office in 1977, he took up postings in Beirut, Alexandria and Cairo, Washington, Paris, and Hong Kong, his globe-trotting punctuated with spells in London, where the young diplomat had a baptism of fire writing foreign affairs speeches for Margaret Thatcher. In 1999, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, he was made Principal Private Secretary to the irascible Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, providing the book with some of its most hilarious sequences. His career culminated in a succession of ambassadorial posts as Our Man in Israel, Saudi Arabia and finally Afghanistan. ‘Ever the Diplomat’ is his revealing and witty account of half a lifetime in diplomacy.