Diplomatic Baggage

When Sunday Times fashion journalist Brigid Keenan married the love of her life in the late Sixties, little idea did she have of the rollercoaster journey they would make around the world together - with most things going horribly awry while being obliged to keep the straightest face and put their best feet forward. For he was a diplomat - and Brigid found herself the smiling face of the European Union in locales ranging from Kazakhstan to Trinidad. Finding herself miserable for the first time in a career into which many would have long ago thrown the towel, she found herself asking (during a farewell party for the Papal Nuncio): was it worth it? As this stream of it-really-happened-to-me stories shows, it most certainly was - if only for our vicarious bewilderment at how exactly you throw a buffet dinner during a public mourning period in Syria, remain viable as a fashion journalist when taste-wise you are three seasons out of it and geographically a world away, make people believe that there are actually terrible things going on in paradise, be a good mother and save some of the finest architecture in Damascus and Brussels from demolition - seemingly all simultaneously.

The beloved Sunday Times bestseller - a touching, hilarious, often outrageous memoir of home-making and family adventures in the world's furthest outposts 'Hilarious, and utterly beguiling - it's a complete treat to be in Keenan's witty and open-hearted company' Esther Freud 'Deliciously effervescent' Sunday Times 'Brigid writes like a dream ... fabulous' Joanna Lumley 'Irresistible' Mail on Sunday When Sunday Times fashion journalist Brigid Keenan married the love of her life in the late Sixties, she had little idea of the rollercoaster journey they would make around the world together. For he was a diplomat - and Brigid found herself the smiling face of the European Union in locales ranging from Kazakhstan to Trinidad, and asking herself questions she never thought she'd have to ask. How do you throw a buffet dinner during a public mourning period in Syria? Where do you track down dog fat in Almaty? And how do you entertain guests in a Nepalese chicken shed? Negotiating diplomatic protocol, difficult teenagers, homesickness, frustrated career aspirations, witch doctors, and giant jumping spiders, Brigid muddles determinedly through - with no shortage of mishaps on the way. 'There are not many books that have actually made me cry from laughing, but this is one of them' Sunday Times

The granting of diplomatic asylum to Julian Assange, the dangers faced by diplomats in troublespots around the world, WikiLeaks and the publication of thousands of embassy cable - situations like these place diplomatic agents and diplomatic law at the very centre of contemporary debate on current affairs. Diplomatic Law in a New Millennium brings together 20 experts to provide insight into some of the most controversial and important matters which characterise modern diplomatic law. They include diplomatic asylum, the treatment (and rights) of domestic staff of diplomatic agents, the inviolability of correspondence, of the diplomatic bag and of the diplomatic mission, the immunity to be given to members of the diplomatic family, diplomatic duties (including the duty of non-interference), but also the rise of diplomatic actors which are not sent by States (including members of the EU diplomatic service). This book explores these matters in a critical, yet accessible manner, and is therefore an invaluable resource for practitioners, scholars and students with an interest in diplomatic relations. The authors of the book include some of the leading authorities on diplomatic law (including a delegate to the 1961 conference which codified modern diplomatic law) as well as serving and former members of the diplomatic corps.

Leathan Wilkey thinks he has been framed for murder by the victim's father. "He's the son of a friend--I'm doing a favor," says the diplomat, who gives Leathan the teenager's name and a photo and tells him where the kid usually hangs out. Leathan finds the teenager within the day. When he reaches him, the kid has just been shot. His dying words to Leathan are: "Protect Marianne." Leathan is left to find Marianne, find out why she needs protecting and from whom, all the while puzzling at what the diplomat didn't tell him. "He's the son of a friend--I'm doing a favor," says the diplomat, who gives Leathan the teenager's name and a photo and tells him where the kid usually hangs out.

The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations has for over 50 years been central to diplomacy and applied to all forms of relations among sovereign States. Participation is almost universal. The rules giving special protection to ambassadors are the oldest established in international law and the Convention is respected almost everywhere. But understanding it as a living instrument requires knowledge of its background in customary international law, of the negotiating history which clarifies many of its terms and the subsequent practice of states and decisions of national courts which have resolved other ambiguities. Diplomatic Law provides this in-depth Commentary. The book is an essential guide to changing methods of modern diplomacy and shows how challenges to its regime of special protection for embassies and diplomats have been met and resolved. It is used by ministries of foreign affairs and cited by domestic courts world-wide. The book analyzes the reasons for the widespread observance of the Convention rules and why in the special case of communications - where there is flagrant violation of their special status - these reasons do not apply. It describes how abuse has been controlled and how the immunities in the Convention have survived onslaught by those claiming that they should give way to conflicting entitlements to access to justice and the desire to punish violators of human rights. It describes how the duty of diplomats not to interfere in the internal affairs of the host State is being narrowed in the face of the communal international responsibility to monitor and uphold human rights.

This work is a commentary on the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the universally-accepted framework for diplomacy between sovereign states. The author places each provision of the Convention in its historical context.--