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The true diplomat considers the future more than the present

20 February 2021

9:00 AM

20 February 2021

9:00 AM

The Ambassadors: Thinking About Diplomacy from Richelieu to Modern Times Robert Cooper

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pp.576, 25

The 17th-century diplomat Sir Henry Wotton said that an ambassador was ‘an honest man sent to lie abroad for his country’. It is a neatly punning definition. An ambassador is a messenger, who has to live (lie) abroad long enough to understand the interests, the preoccupations and the driving emotions of the people he deals with.

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