A great time ago when the world was young there was a pleasant and harmless custom by which a British ambassador when leaving his post could sit down and write a valedictory dispatch to the Foreign Secretary. This was not compulsory; often an ambassador withheld his opinions until he was leaving not just a particular post but the foreign office as a whole.
The motives of the valedictory dispatch varied. Some ambassadors concentrated on summarising the country in which they had last served; others attempted to sum up the whole period of their service. Some took the opportunity to deplore the present state of Britain; others told amusing stories; almost all thanked the staff who had supported them, and in particular their wives. Some seemed mainly anxious to display the glitter and elegance of their own prose style.
This agreeable tradition was brought to an abrupt end by Margaret Beckett during her time as Foreign Secretary. She took exception to a particularly brusque description by a departing ambassador of British foreign policy under Tony Blair as ‘bull- shit bingo’. Not notorious for her sense of humour, she used a single exaggerated phrase to cripple a tradition which had given mild pleasure.
Then Matthew Parris was persuaded by an enterprising BBC man, Andrew Bryson, to use the Freedom of Information Act to resurrect the valedictory dispatch. But their victory was not complete. Some dispatches were withheld entirely by the mandarins who direct the FoI process, while others were cut about.
Nevertheless there remains a body of ambassadorial writing which will give pleasure to those who enjoy the cut and thrust of official prose. Some targets of course are easy to hit and they are well represented here.
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