Hugh Thomas

In the United States several diplomats have written profound books about countries where they have been posted. For example, the works on the Soviet Union by George Kennan and Chip Bohlen were among the most important studies of that once menacing empire. I remember little recently by British ambassadors apart from Percy Cradock’s admirable Experiences of China. Autobio- graphies there have, of course, been in plenty, amongst which I rank highest Lord Vansittart’s extraordinary The Mist Process- ion, a curious mixture of arrogance and melancholy, each chapter of which had as an epigraph a line from one of the author’s own poems. There was Eastern Approaches of Fitzroy Maclean with its famous vignette of the show trials of 1937.