Parting Shots

Book excerpt: Up till 2006, a British Ambassador quitting his post abroad would write a valedictory despatch circulated widely across government, from other far-flung members of the service to the Prime Minister himself. This was the parting shot, the opportunity to offer a personal view of the country he was leaving- the alcoholic intake of its population, the corruption of its ministers, the state of the capital's drains, or the impossibility of getting embassy staff to clean British guests' shoes - whatever he or she wanted to get off their chest. Often funny, frequently astute and almost always gloriously non-politically correct, these parting shots shed light on Britian's place in the world, and reveal the curious cocktail of priviledge and privation which make up the life of an ambassador abroad. 'There is, I fear, no question but that the average Nicaraguan is one of the most dishonest, unreliable, violent and alcholic of the Latin Americans' Roger Pinsent, Managua, 1967 'The detention of the Pinochet made life in Chile unusually interesting... I have never received quite so many death threats' Dame Glynne Evans, Lisbon, 2004