No one doubts that international politics is a serious business, but, as Richard Woolcott shows in this witty memoir, the life of the diplomat has more than its fair share of absurdity and even high comedy.
Required, not only, to sacrifice a settled home and family life in the service of their country, diplomats must also, heroically, offer up their livers to booze, their stomachs to endless official dinners, their integrity to dangerous liaisons and the weasel art of spin and evasion, and their sanity to the pomposity and weird protocols that are part and parcel of the international scene.
'Undiplomatic Activities' is filled with anecdotes and tales from an extraordinary career spanning the period from his first mid-century posting to Moscow on the eve of Stalin's death to the end of the century as Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra, via the capitals of Europe, Africa, Asia, the USA, and the United Nations.
