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The Spanish Ambassador's Suitcase
The Spanish Ambassador's Suitcase is a hilarious new collection of diplomatic tales by Matthew Parris and Andrew Bryson
Heard the one about the Spanish Ambassador who arrived in the scorching Saharan desert fully suited and with a mysteriously enormous suitcase? Or the horse they gave Prime Minister John Major in Turkmenistan - which hapless embassy officials had to rescue from the clutches of the Moscow railway? These and other 'funnies', as they are known in Whitehall, are included in Matthew Parris and and Andrew Bryson's glorious new volume of not so diplomatic writing, which accompanies a new BBC Radio 4 series is a follow up to their acclaimed collection of ambassadors' final despatches, Parting Shots.
Drawn from Freedom of Information requests and previously overlooked Valedictories these startling despatches throw a revealing light on how the British have viewed the world - and, unwittingly perhaps, on how the world has viewed the British.
Praise for Parting Shots:
'Parting Shots is unbuttoned, indiscreet and very funny' Yorkshire Post
'Fascinating, if sometimes uncomfortable, reading' Financial Times
'Very funny' Guardian
After working in the Foreign Office then serving as a Conservative MP, Matthew Parris joined The Times in 1988. He writes two weekly columns for The Times and one for the Spectator, and in 2011 won the Best Columnist Award at the British Press awards. His acclaimed autobiography Chance Witness was published by Penguin in 2003. He is a frequent broadcaster.
Andrew Bryson is a radio journalist working in the BBC's Business and Economic Unit. He frequently works as a producer on Radio 4's Today programme and on Radio 5 Live.
Heard the one about the Spanish Ambassador who arrived in the scorching Saharan desert fully suited and with a mysteriously enormous suitcase? Or the horse they gave Prime Minister John Major in Turkmenistan - which hapless embassy officials had to rescue from the clutches of the Moscow railway? These and other 'funnies', as they are known in Whitehall, are included in Matthew Parris and and Andrew Bryson's glorious new volume of not so diplomatic writing, which accompanies a new BBC Radio 4 series is a follow up to their acclaimed collection of ambassadors' final despatches, Parting Shots.
Drawn from Freedom of Information requests and previously overlooked Valedictories these startling despatches throw a revealing light on how the British have viewed the world - and, unwittingly perhaps, on how the world has viewed the British.
Praise for Parting Shots:
'Parting Shots is unbuttoned, indiscreet and very funny' Yorkshire Post
'Fascinating, if sometimes uncomfortable, reading' Financial Times
'Very funny' Guardian
After working in the Foreign Office then serving as a Conservative MP, Matthew Parris joined The Times in 1988. He writes two weekly columns for The Times and one for the Spectator, and in 2011 won the Best Columnist Award at the British Press awards. His acclaimed autobiography Chance Witness was published by Penguin in 2003. He is a frequent broadcaster.
Andrew Bryson is a radio journalist working in the BBC's Business and Economic Unit. He frequently works as a producer on Radio 4's Today programme and on Radio 5 Live.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
30 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
November 24, 2019
Smarmy, charmless examples of the ignorance and arrogance of the imperial mindset.
April 6, 2019
A collection of beautifully if often self-consciously written despatches from British embassies and high commissions around the world, mostly in the twentieth century and a couple from the late nineteenth.
Some of them are brilliant and incisive at face value - accounts of an official visit to Hermann Goring in 1934 and a harakiri ritual in Japan in 1868 were particular standouts for me. Others are interesting more as artefacts of the British foreign and colonial policy mindset during this period, which appears to have been pervasively racist, condescending and cynical (as well as, needless to say, phlegmatic in the face of adversity and amusingly ironic at all times).
As a British reader who has lived abroad for a number of years I felt a strange combination of pride and admiration for a style of writing that is quintessentially, er, British (or Oxbridge-educated English for the most part) along with embarrassment for the way in which a social elite from my country paraded around the world like it owned the place for two hundred years.
If this book is anything to go by, the professionalism and rigour with which British diplomats were taught to write seems to have been coupled with a rank amateurism in almost all other areas of their work. In reality I’m sure this is unfair, and for every preening ambassador who was breaking up the time between lunches and cocktails by penning self-aggrandising letters to his mates in London there will have been dozens of officials quietly getting on with sterling and important work.
Nonetheless, any foreign observers who find themselves baffled at the calamitous turns British politics have taken in the last couple of years would benefit from reading this book. Among other things it helps to demonstrate that the arrogance, entitlement and dilettantism exhibited by Boris Johnson and various identically educated architects of Brexit has very deep cultural roots and is long overdue the humiliating international exposure it is now receiving.
Some of them are brilliant and incisive at face value - accounts of an official visit to Hermann Goring in 1934 and a harakiri ritual in Japan in 1868 were particular standouts for me. Others are interesting more as artefacts of the British foreign and colonial policy mindset during this period, which appears to have been pervasively racist, condescending and cynical (as well as, needless to say, phlegmatic in the face of adversity and amusingly ironic at all times).
As a British reader who has lived abroad for a number of years I felt a strange combination of pride and admiration for a style of writing that is quintessentially, er, British (or Oxbridge-educated English for the most part) along with embarrassment for the way in which a social elite from my country paraded around the world like it owned the place for two hundred years.
If this book is anything to go by, the professionalism and rigour with which British diplomats were taught to write seems to have been coupled with a rank amateurism in almost all other areas of their work. In reality I’m sure this is unfair, and for every preening ambassador who was breaking up the time between lunches and cocktails by penning self-aggrandising letters to his mates in London there will have been dozens of officials quietly getting on with sterling and important work.
Nonetheless, any foreign observers who find themselves baffled at the calamitous turns British politics have taken in the last couple of years would benefit from reading this book. Among other things it helps to demonstrate that the arrogance, entitlement and dilettantism exhibited by Boris Johnson and various identically educated architects of Brexit has very deep cultural roots and is long overdue the humiliating international exposure it is now receiving.
January 14, 2019
A very fact based read . Some interesting missives , but not enough to make this an enjoyable read.
May 22, 2023
A fun look at not just the diplomatic world but the world as a whole.
July 1, 2013
A sense of British politesse prevents me from giving it no stars at all. What can I say? Over long,bitty and Parris and Bryson are annoyingly politically correct by prefacing communiques that date from the 60's and 70's written in the demotic of the time; it's about as stupid as apologising for the Battle of Agincourt because Henry V's claim to the French throne was based on a questionable provenance. But for the record, I would like to apologise to the French nation for the Battle of Agincourt and all who suffered as a result of Britain's Empire building activities. I would however point out that they, the French (or more correctly the Normans) started it by turning up at Hastings in 1066 but I am happy to let bygones be bygones.
September 5, 2014
Mustafa Kunt and some other amusing despatches from the British diplomatic service. Good to read in a plane or by the pool.
August 13, 2025
on the whole this was definitely interesting with a little sprinkle of humorous. the book is split into 3 sections which I think get progressively weaker but it was certainly a fun insight into 20th century British diplomacy.
the opening section is the funniest (as you'd hope given its a collection of witty dispatches). The top ones for me:
- a diplomat being given the right to have 10 wives so asking how the foreign office will fund his new life
- the foreign office making condoms available for all employees, but one woman being unable to take them because her colleagues are too prude
- a wonderful mockery of management consultancy and change management that ill certainly be sharing
the middle (and by far longest) section is a series of "first impressions" of diplomats, usually written a few months into a posting. This was defo interesting but little more. My highlights:
- Namibia being described as "like Guildford with sun". what on earth was he smoking!!!!
- there was a fun comparison of the soviet economy to a car with one gear that now needs to work on the motorway. difficult to condense into this review but a great vivid bit of writing
the last section was a series of valedictations which I don't think added a ton to the book. The best of these was one that descended into a critique of the foreign office and bureaucracy that I'd have loved to know the result to
overall this was a good read but you can tell its the culmination of a radio show that I imagine would be a far better format for these fun findings
the opening section is the funniest (as you'd hope given its a collection of witty dispatches). The top ones for me:
- a diplomat being given the right to have 10 wives so asking how the foreign office will fund his new life
- the foreign office making condoms available for all employees, but one woman being unable to take them because her colleagues are too prude
- a wonderful mockery of management consultancy and change management that ill certainly be sharing
the middle (and by far longest) section is a series of "first impressions" of diplomats, usually written a few months into a posting. This was defo interesting but little more. My highlights:
- Namibia being described as "like Guildford with sun". what on earth was he smoking!!!!
- there was a fun comparison of the soviet economy to a car with one gear that now needs to work on the motorway. difficult to condense into this review but a great vivid bit of writing
the last section was a series of valedictations which I don't think added a ton to the book. The best of these was one that descended into a critique of the foreign office and bureaucracy that I'd have loved to know the result to
overall this was a good read but you can tell its the culmination of a radio show that I imagine would be a far better format for these fun findings
September 23, 2021
There are some really funny bits in this book which makes it worth reading. Some of the other commentaries by ambassadors were less interesting to me, although I could relate to all the events from the 1960s onwards. I remember them. I'm old now.
April 8, 2019
Great fun. Reminds me of the atmosphere of the DS we experienced as expats in the 1970s/80s.
September 25, 2021
Fun light read.
October 18, 2021
An interesting collection of missives from ambassadors over the years, of which some are truly hilarious. The introduction was perhaps a little too long
March 14, 2020
A marvellous collection of extremely erudite and entertaining dispatches, given to me by a friend working for the FCO with not a little amusement and quiet irony.
May 9, 2014
This was an odd book. The book was sub-titled "Stories from the Diplomatic Bag" and a quote from an Evening Standard review said that it was "Marvellous and revealing" - so I was expecting something entertaining and enjoyable. It was neither. What it reads like is a series of civil service reports, which is hardly surprising given that it is, in reality, a series of civil service reports!
I have a friend who is a member of the diplomatic corp and he is witty and entertaining when he talks about his work - so I expected something along those lines from this book; but much of the writing was stuffy and condescending. And one of the big surprises was the level of racism implied in many of the pieces. Admittedly much of this material was written 30 plus years ago (since much of it was covered by the official secrets act and has only recently been de-classified)but it's quite shocking just how much some of our foreign office personnel looked down their noses at "Johnny Foreigner" - quite an eye opener.
Perhaps, not surprisingly, the best article in the book is one from a Keith Haskell who was our Ambassador to Brazil in the late 1990s. His article heavily criticises Whitehall and the institutional approach to overseas diplomacy and part of his despatch was headlined "What's wrong with the Diplomatic Service". I was not surprised to read that Haskell's nineteen immediate predecessors as Ambassador to Brazil were all knighted, as was his immediate successor - but he himself was passed over and resigned on his return to the UK. It pretty much sums up the Foreign Office as it comes across in this book - outdated, petty and inefficient.
I have a friend who is a member of the diplomatic corp and he is witty and entertaining when he talks about his work - so I expected something along those lines from this book; but much of the writing was stuffy and condescending. And one of the big surprises was the level of racism implied in many of the pieces. Admittedly much of this material was written 30 plus years ago (since much of it was covered by the official secrets act and has only recently been de-classified)but it's quite shocking just how much some of our foreign office personnel looked down their noses at "Johnny Foreigner" - quite an eye opener.
Perhaps, not surprisingly, the best article in the book is one from a Keith Haskell who was our Ambassador to Brazil in the late 1990s. His article heavily criticises Whitehall and the institutional approach to overseas diplomacy and part of his despatch was headlined "What's wrong with the Diplomatic Service". I was not surprised to read that Haskell's nineteen immediate predecessors as Ambassador to Brazil were all knighted, as was his immediate successor - but he himself was passed over and resigned on his return to the UK. It pretty much sums up the Foreign Office as it comes across in this book - outdated, petty and inefficient.
November 1, 2013
It wasn't what I expected. Only a few are funny stories.
But these missives from British diplomats abroad over the last century are primary sources as far as history goes and I took from it a history lesson. We Brits do not always come out of it looking well, but that is a sign of those times. Only one or two for example are from women, but that's not necessarily the editor's fault. Racism and snobbishness are also evident. But we can't ignore that that's how people thought- and causes us to make sure we really have moved away from that.
As long as you're not expecting a book of laughs but rather pieces of history, this is an interesting book.
But these missives from British diplomats abroad over the last century are primary sources as far as history goes and I took from it a history lesson. We Brits do not always come out of it looking well, but that is a sign of those times. Only one or two for example are from women, but that's not necessarily the editor's fault. Racism and snobbishness are also evident. But we can't ignore that that's how people thought- and causes us to make sure we really have moved away from that.
As long as you're not expecting a book of laughs but rather pieces of history, this is an interesting book.
April 16, 2014
Amusing at times but a bit dull in bits. I am sure the life of an Ambassador isn't all Ferrero Rocher and receptions but this book does give some insight into the frustrations and characters and culture that a diplomat comes across.
The very British description, characterisation and moral judgements are hilarious at times, racist on occasion and somewhat out of date...
"But then Brazil is like that: great brilliance at the too, apathy and sloth in the lower levels, endless good humour throughout"
Oh how we look down on others.....
The very British description, characterisation and moral judgements are hilarious at times, racist on occasion and somewhat out of date...
"But then Brazil is like that: great brilliance at the too, apathy and sloth in the lower levels, endless good humour throughout"
Oh how we look down on others.....
November 9, 2013
A good train book. Short reads that can be dipped in and out of. I would not recommend trying to read it all in one go. A view into the diplomat. I think inevitably the majority of stories while interesting and providing an insight into UK nationals living abroad they are not always thya amusing because of the style the diplomatic dispatches are written in. Selling them as amusing probably leads to people being underwhelmed.
May 6, 2022
Provides an interesting snap shot of the British diplomatic service and the countries its staff worked in, within a specific point of history. Makes for slightly uncomfortable reading at times due to the racism that some of the ambassadors in the 1970s used so does need to be read as historical writing rather than anything else. Pieces of writing are in good bite sized sections, so easy to read if commuting.
December 31, 2016
I was surprised to find quite a number of negative comments for the book. I've found it to be a great read. The people writing the reports and letters in it have a terrific grasp of English and write entertainingly. I've also found it to be informative, letting one in on what senior diplomats said to each other in these various times and places.
January 8, 2014
One of the most English books I have ever read - not just because of the contents of the cables (which are fascinating) but because of the commentary that goes with them. Dozens of snapshots of the world at moments in time.
November 25, 2012
Interesting, but Mr Parris' and my sense of humour do not fit together
July 30, 2014
Very interesting, and amusingly written. Amazing how perspectives change with time!
January 20, 2015
Amusing, interesting and an insight into various countries as they then were. A book to dip in and out. The standard of English is superb. My favourite was by Sir J Russell re Brazil page 180
April 24, 2020
Quite readable but not particularly 'interesting' - doesn't draw me in
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews