Christopher Meyer

I have a book of essays from 1986 by a group of British and American scholars called The Special Relationship. The editor, Professor Roger Louis, was advised to give it another title. The director of Chatham House, the late David Watt no less, called it ‘rhetorical nonsense’. Yet, as Louis noted: The ‘Special Relationship’ would not go away. Indeed it haunted the discussions. Eventually it was referred to as the ghost, ever present yet elusive, derided by some but acknowledged by all. Thirty-four years later the ghost is still floating around. Ian Buruma’s new book is the latest attempt to exorcise it. I suspect that it will be no more successful than previous efforts.

It was not until I went to Harvard in 1988 to take a year out from the Foreign Office that I came to realise how riven by ideology the world of US foreign policy had become. For 20 years I had been moulded by the resolute pragmatism of British diplomacy. My American sabbatical threw open the door to intellectual conflict in the study and practice of international relations unlike anything I had experienced. Two great warring clans — the realists and the idealists, those who took the world as they found it and those who saw the world as they would like it to be — were at each other’s throats. At the head of the realists towered Henry Kissinger, as he does to this day, aged 96. Kissinger remains a figure of profound and sometimes bitter divisiveness.

At first blush this looks like one of those run-of-the-mill coffee-table books published just for the Christmas market — expensively produced, replete with beautiful photographs, a text as undemanding as the tinkling notes of a cocktail-bar pianist, and the whole thing massively heavy. It is a beautiful — and heavy — book, with fine photographs by Luke White. But what distinguishes it is the skill and acuity with which James Stourton has written the commentary, making it a serious and engrossing work of history. His text takes the form of an introductory essay on the changing nature of diplomacy over the centuries, a model of elegant concision, followed by the histories of 26 embassies and ambassadorial residences scattered around the globe.

Tom Fletcher, a young star of the Foreign Office, made his reputation last year when he blogged his ‘valedictory despatch’ from Beirut, where he had served as ambassador for several years. From time immemorial ambassadors had written these despatches on quitting their posts. It was the occasion to spread your diplomatic wings with candid observations on the country or career you were leaving. A few have been small literary gems and have been republished in book form. Some were laced with indiscretion. In his farewell despatch, Sir Ivor Roberts, our man in Rome earlier this century, was extremely rude (rightly so) about the way the Foreign Office was run.

While Tony Blair emerged from his memoirs as a chameleon of many colours, there is only one George W. Bush in Decision Points. The book reads like the man speaks. If it has been ghosted — and Bush gives thanks to a multitude of helpers — it has been done with consummate skill to preserve the authentic Bush voice. The result will be unexpected, even unwelcome, to many. This is an interesting and readable book, which clips along in short, spare sentences, with frequent flashes of humour. Don’t take my word for it. It has been praised by none other than Bill Clinton.