Author: Henry Brind

Publisher: Radcliffe Press

Published: 1999-12-31

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781860643774

'An ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.' (Sir Henry Wotton, 1604). Harry Brind did not emulate his illustrious seventeenth-century diplomatic predecessors, as can be seen from his compelling account of British diplomacy in difficult and exotic locations, from the last days of empire to the late twentieth century. After leaving the army, Harry Brind joined the Colonial Service in the Gold Coast and Ghana after independence. This was a period of vital importance in the history of the British policy on decolonization, of which Ghana was regarded as a key example. Brind went on to Canada – an independent and long-established former Dominion – and, in the sharpest contrast, after a spell in London dealing with Britain's application to join the Common Market, to Uganda during Idi Amin's tyranny. In Lying Abroad, he gives a graphic and harrowing picture of one of the worst episodes in Africa's modern history. His time in Mauritius might, in comparison, seem idyllic but there were pressing diplomatic problems in an island of mixed ethnicity and still bearing the stamp of its French colonial past. Brind's period as ambassador in Somalia is of great interest to students of modern history and international relations – the story of a vital piece on the chessboard of global political interest in the turbulent Horn of Africa. His account of his last major appointment, as High Commissioner in Malawi during Hastings Banda's rule, gives a sharply-etched picture of contrasts: a poor but stable country ruled almost as a personal fief by a Life President both demonised and admired. Lying Abroad encapsulates a period when the problems of post-imperial Britain were at their height. Brind describes the pressures of international diplomacy with humour, lightness of touch and authority.