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Foreign affairs and diplomacy

What’s the context? 30 September 1938: The Munich Agreement

Image from German Federal Archive

75 years ago today, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew back from Munich after two days of tense discussions with the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler. He had reached an agreement setting out a timetable and terms for the Nazi takeover of …

The Locarno Suite: ‘Drawing room for the Nation’

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Art and design, Foreign affairs and diplomacy, Foreign Office Historians
Conference Room

Early foreign diplomatic entertainment by the Foreign Secretary took place in local taverns or at his home, but by the 1850s the London Diplomatic Corps had increased so greatly that there were very few places sufficiently large enough to contain …

Prime Ministers and their Foreign Secretaries

On New Year’s Day 1814, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, set sail from Harwich for Holland with a challenging brief: to build a coalition with Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden to finally bring an end to the French Empire …

Prime Ministers and Presidents: special relationships

In December 1941, after the Americans had been plunged into the Second World War by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill crossed the Atlantic to confer with Franklin Roosevelt. As a mark of the closeness of the wartime alliance, he was …