Sri Lanka

In the winter period when our days are cold and rainy we like to do cosy things and having a nice cup of tea with delicious home made cookies, bread or cake is one of them. For St Andrews day we asked our British colleagues to give us tips on some Scottish food which we […]

I have spent 7 years working in the joint Home Office and Foreign Office Forced Marriage Unit (FMU). As I walk into work, anticipating the type of calls I will handle today still brings a mixture of apprehension but also promise – knowing the unit, every day, has the potential to save lives. During my […]

When I tell people I live in Lagos, Nigeria, I often get quite a lot of quizzical looks… Why did you move there with your family? Is it safe?  What about Boko Haram? Is corruption not endemic? As the British Deputy High Commissioner to Nigeria, I know that the challenges of corruption, insecurity and poverty […]

Mongolia is everything you expect. Mongolia is also everything you don’t expect. At least that’s what I found as the UK’s Ambassador. The world’s least densely populated country, which was once one of the largest empires in world history, it is a land of immense beauty and rich history. Mongolia is also a vibrant 21st […]

Last weekend we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting on the Western Front in the First World War. In the UK and Commonwealth, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month has become a time to stop, fall silent, and remember the sacrifice of those killed in […]

I was delighted last week to attend the match between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Football Club (“FCO FC”) against the Austrian Foreign Ministry Team (“FC Außenamt”). FCO FC have been touring for years. I hosted them when I was Ambassador in Kiev in 2011 in the beautiful setting of the Dynamo Kyiv stadium when […]

Last week I had the opportunity to visit Kairouan, a Tunisian city that has been a centre of scholarship and Islamic science for hundreds of years.  With some of the scholars, we talked about tolerance and co-existence, values that the city and its university have been promoting for generations. The city was founded in 670 […]

The Council came to a hot and weary end last Friday with some good results on the issues that mattered. Most importantly the EU and the African Group reached agreement on an investigation into reports of serious violations in the DRC. The Council also passed strong resolutions on violence against women, discrimination against women, child […]

Guangdong Province is China’s largest provincial economy and the principal driver of the national economy over the last 30 years. Under China’s innovation-driven development strategy, Guangdong is positioned as China’s Innovation Centre for Science and Technology Industry, with special focus on industrial development and technology transfer. Companies in Guangdong employ more R&D personnel than any […]