Getting Our Way | Christopher Meyer | Review by The Spectator

This book is companion to a television series (though the times seem slightly out of joint — on the front cover we are told that it is ‘As seen on the BBC’ while at the back the series is described as ‘first broadcast in 2010’). As such, perhaps unfairly, few would expect it to be scholarly or profound. Sir Christopher, certainly, has no pretensions to either. Getting Our Way is an enjoyable scamper through 450 years of British diplomatic history: from Henry Killigrew negotiating with the Scots at the end of the 16th century to the tribulations of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Any rational foreign policy, Meyer maintains, must be based on national interest. The three pillars of this are Security, Prosperity and Values. Each is examined in turn. The first two are pretty straightforward. Meyer’s main preoccupation is to establish that, though much has changed, the essentials of diplomacy remain the same. The qualities of good foreign servants are unaltered: tact, endless patience, charm, a good memory, a dash of low cunning, a profound understanding of the country to which they are accredited, resistance to the temptation to ‘go native’ or to commit the ‘ultimate diplomatic sin’ of losing touch with their own country.

Some of the analogies Meyer draws between the past and the present seem a little strained. When Killigrew had a secret audience with Queen Elizabeth in the completely secure surroundings of Woodstock the reader is not much enlightened by being told that this was the equivalent of today’s ‘secure speech’ room in embassies. Nor does a parallel between a ball at the Congress of Vienna and the Red Cross Ball at Palm Beach, Florida, carry complete conviction. But on the whole, Meyer convinces the reader that, though today’s Foreign Service may be demoralised and confused, the tasks that it confronts and the skills required to accomplish them are much as they have always been.