I’ve been after a copy of this 1949 guide for ages. It was published at a bit of a tipping point for the Foreign Office - it was starting to recruit from a broader x-section of society and the fear was that these new diplomats wouldn’t know how to behave when they went abroad. 🧵 The author was Marcus Cheke, Vice Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps at the time. He was very much a representative of the old guard - public school and Trinity College Cambridge. He went on to serve as Minister at The Holy See and as a gentleman usher to the Queen.

Recently discovered The Civil Servant and his World: A Young Person’s Guide (1966) by John Carswell.

The final chapter lists the eight qualities that go to make a happy, reasonably successful civil servant: 🧵 1. Companionableness

“In the course of any civil service career, one has to work with all kinds of people (…) To differ amicably while keeping to one’s own viewpoint and striving to find the reconciling answer, is most important.”

In 1716, François de Callières wrote a short practical treatise on diplomacy. It became a core text for trainee diplomats for centuries. It was ahead of its time in many ways, arguing for a professional and merit-based diplomatic service

Here are 10 pieces of advice on drafting: 1. “There is nothing more important than that the diplomatist living abroad should feel himself able to write with candour, freedom and force in all his efforts to describe the land in which he lives.”

British diplomat Sir Peter Marshall died in June this year. He finished his Foreign Office career as UK Permanent Representative in Geneva (1979-83) before becoming Deputy SG of the Commonwealth (1983-88).

Here are his ten precepts of diplomacy. 🧵 1. It takes two to negotiate.

“Diplomats know only too well that apparently irreconcilable differences can often be settled, given time, patience, understanding and imagination (…) Nothing ventured, nothing win.”

On this day in 1940, the Ambassador and the last five members of the British Embassy in Paris abandoned their cars on the beach at Arcachon (near Bourdeaux) and were picked up by a sardine fishing boat organised by a young intelligence officer called Ian Fleming.🧵 Over a month before, on 16 May, the Embassy had sent wives and children back to the UK and began the process of burning 25 years of archives. The bonfires lasted for five days. Gusts of wind blew the occasional charred sheet of paper on to the Champs-Elysées.

Why does the Foreign Office look like this, and why was its architect not entirely happy with it when it was built? A (long) thread 🧵 In the 1830s, the government decided that it needed new offices to accommodate the expanding Victorian bureaucracy.

The FO building in Downing St was in particularly poor shape. Whenever there was a reception, the floors had to be propped up from below to stop then collapsing.

It turns out that you’re all really into 19th century civil service exams.

So here’s part 2 of the 1876 exam to become a Foreign Office clerk: History of Europe 1783-1847.

You have three hours.

You may begin. 🧵 1. Give some account of Mirabeau, Necker, Dumouriez, Lafayette, and Roland

2. To what cause may the failure of the Allies in the campaigns of 1793 be ascribed?

3. Trace the career of Napoleon from the siege of Toulon to his appointment as First Consul.

Would you have passed the exam to become a Foreign Office clerk in 1876?

Here’s the Constitutional History of England paper.

You have three hours. 1. What were the chief administrative and judicial changes introduced by William the Conqueror?

2. What abuses of the prerogatives of the crown furnished the chief grounds of compliant against the government of Henry II and his immediate successors?

Patrick Barrington died on this day in 1990. He wrote the only poem about diplomacy you need to know.

The Diplomatic Platypus (1934)

I had a duck-billed platypus when I was up at Trinity

With whom I soon discovered a remarkable affinity. 🧵 He used to live in lodgings with myself and Arthur Purvis,

And we all went up together for the Diplomatic Service.

I had a certain confidence, I own, in his ability,

He mastered all the subjects with remarkable facility;

30 Sept 1661 was the wildest day in the history of the London diplomatic corps. It is also a story of why protocol matters.

The new Swedish Ambassador Count Brahe was arriving in London. Back then, it was the custom for new foreign envoys to enter London with maximum pomp. (1/8) After he landed at Tower Wharf at 3pm, the new Swedish envoy Count Brahe stepped into the royal coach that had been sent to fetch him, and drove off to be formally presented to King Charles II. Here things start to go awry. (2/8)