Everyone likes the opportunity to travel in their job; especially if you are asked to go overseas, and sometimes you may choose to take your work home with you. This is a long established practice for many occupations. But the …
Ninety years ago today, the British political mould was shattered by the election of the first Labour government. After an inconclusive election on 6 December 1923 that the ruling Conservatives lost but nobody won, Ramsay MacDonald took office as both …
Ask anyone to name Winston Churchill’s best-known speech and nine times out of ten they will answer: We shall fight them on the beaches. It’s not an exact quotation – Churchill did not include the word ‘them’ – but the …
Fifty years ago today, the 35th President of the United States of America was shot dead as his car drove through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. The brutal shock of the assassination made it one of the defining moments of …
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 …
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 …
A quick question: how many Foreign Secretaries have there been since the Foreign Office was founded in 1782? Fifty, 100? The answer is 61 - and a portrait of every former foreign secretary hangs on the walls of the Secretary …
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 …
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 …
Britain has a proud Olympic tradition. Since the revival of the modern Games in 1896, Britain is one of few nations to have sent competitors to every summer Olympics, and this year London has the distinction of being the first …
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