Gay marriage the easy way

‘The next time we want to import a horse to Russia,’ wrote Laura Brady, Second Secretary in our Moscow embassy, ‘it will be a doddle.’ I quote her story in an anthology of diplomatic writing, The Spanish Ambassador’s Suitcase, that the BBC’s Andrew Bryson and I have collected for the new book. Miss Brady was giving the Foreign Office an account of her efforts to collect a horse from Moscow’s station. The horse was a present to the Prime Minister, John Major, from the President of Turkmenistan, who had despatched the fierce Akhal-Teke warhorse by train accompanied by a wagon-load of melons to pay the Russian Railways. The point Brady is making is that after a hilarious few days learning her way through a maze of Russian red tape, veterinary bureaucracy and railway obstructivism (and shovelling manure), she now knows the ropes. She smiles that she’ll probably never need the knowledge again.