Ever the Diplomat: Confessions of a Foreign Office Mandarin,

Sherard Cowper-Coles, HarperPress, 336pp, £8.99 (paperback)
Just as every soldier loves a good fight, so every diplomat secretly yearns for a crisis. Sherard Cowper-Coles admits it – and he was in the thick of plenty. He began on the Foreign Office Irish desk when the IRA campaign was at its height. He moved to Lebanon, to the notorious FCO ‘spy school’ to learn Arabic as the civil war was getting under way, retreating under fire with the other young dips as the Shemlan school shut its doors for ever. When he was posted to Cairo, Sadat was assassinated. In Washington during the final Reagan years, the Queen’s visit, Thatcher’s farewell banquet and Bush Senior’s election campaign kept up the Potomac fever. As head of the Hong Kong desk in London, he was caught in the crossfire of Chris Patten’s quarrels with Beijing. In Paris he had the death of Diana. As ambassador to Israel he endured the unending crises of Middle East ‘peace’ politics. He headed the embassy in Saudi Arabia when al-Qaeda’s terrorism was taking ever more horrific tolls. And then came his third ambassadorship, to Afghanistan.
Cowper-Coles flew higher than most high fliers. The Icarus moment came when he flew into the burning opposition of the military in Afghanistan. He crashed to earth in a blazing row over policy, personnel and politics, starkly chronicled in his earlier book, Cables from Kabul. Thirty years in the FCO – a job he loved unreservedly – have yielded a witty analysis of diplomacy’s tradecraft, with laconic apercus, that not only defines what Britain’s foreign policy is or ought to be; it chronicles the muddles, improvisations, ideals and sometimes heroic endeavours so discreetly hidden beneath the FCO pinstripe.
Cowper-Coles offers sage advice: never wear a silly hat; keep your writing clear and your thinking honest; beware of overtaxing your schoolboy French (‘I’ve always lusted after you, Lionel, in every position’ was not exactly what Blair intended to tell the French Prime Minister in his own language); neither fawn nor bluster; and draw deep into your wells of patience when dealing with ministers, their tempers, mistresses, dogs and foibles. He is quick with the gossip and the anecdote – and invariably royalty occasions the best. A disastrous visit by Prince Philip to Egypt, when the police escorts got lost in the desert, ended with the irascible prince attempting to pinpoint the country’s problems by telling the local press that ‘you Egyptians breed like rabbits’. In Washington, the Queen once famously had no platform from which to give her speech, was wholly concealed by the microphones and was labelled by the press ‘the talking hat’.
The best chapter covers the two years spent as principal private secretary to Robin Cook. The workload was killing, the flaps continuous, the cock-ups inevitable and the brutality of party politics rawly on view. He liked Cook. But he knew his shortcomings: insecurity, vanity, inability to keep time or order, impatience with officials and an infuriating desire always to know better and show off. There were the famous early disasters: a mismanaged royal visit to India, Cook’s public split with his wife, Netanyahu’s snub in Jerusalem. The press had it in for the ‘Gnome Secretary’, and Cowper- Coles had to devise a defensive strategy every bit as demanding as the war later in Afghanistan.
Yet Cook did not help himself. He refused to read his dispatches on time (Cowper-Coles, with all Sir Humphrey’s mandarin cunning, used to load up the red boxes with folders colour-coded by urgency, the National Hunt form book and other treats half way down and non-urgent papers that would distract him right at the bottom). His capricious purchase of two small, bearded, aggressive Scottish terriers – rather like their owner, as one diplomat remarked – wasted endless diplomatic hours walking these semi-feral Scotties round St. James’s Park or trying to stop them widdling on Lord Stanhope’s priceless antique chairs at Chevening, the Foreign Secretary’s country seat.
Nevertheless, Cowper-Coles is commendably loyal. Cook did achieve things: close links with other foreign ministers, foreign policy with an ethical dimension, clear priorities and a principled resignation over Iraq. For Cowper-Coles, Cook’s withering parliamentary denunciation of the decision to invade redeems all else.
His book, like his career, rollicks through low politics, high ideals, farcical troughs and honourable endeavour. He mocks, but never in spite. He gossips, but not out of turn. Above all, his self-deprecating view on his own mandarin pomposity and linguistic ability adds a very British touch to the diplomat’s charm. As he left Cairo he showed his successor – also a polished Arabist – his visiting cards. ‘Sherard,’ he said, ‘there is something wrong here. The English describes you as “Second Secretary (Information)” but the Arabic gives your title as “Second Secretary (Flags)”.’ In Arabic, a misplaced accent can make all the difference. He was mortified. But in truth, Cowper-Coles flew the flag proudly all his life.