Cynics or idealists

There ought to be more mileage than there is in stories of diplomacy. Publishers long ago got wise to the memoirs of ex-ambassadors, which in a more servile age used to clog up their catalogues just as the ghosted anguish of reality starlets does now. I am a sucker for the autobiographies of politicians, however atrociously written, self-serving, drab or ‘humorous’; but I draw the line at the memoirs of ex-foreign secretaries.

The subject of diplomacy sounds much more fun than it really is. Negotiations make for dull reading; Lord Salisbury, thinking about Castlereagh at the Congress of Vienna, said: ‘There is nothing dramatic in the success of a diplomatist. His victories are made up of a series of micro- scopic advantages.’ It might act as a warning to anyone proposing to write a book about it, or publish one.

Douglas Hurd’s book, written with the under-advertised collaboration of Edward Young, is lucid and pointed in its opinions as it goes through the merits of various foreign secretaries from Castlereagh onwards.