seeing her was at a party in Hyderabad House.8 She said, ‘Have you tried the icecream?’ and I said no. She said, ‘Oh, do have some’, so I helped myself, and she said, ‘I spent the morning teaching the chef how to do it, so I want you to enjoy it.’ I took a spoonful and she took a spoonful, and she gave a scream and said, ‘The man’s got it wrong! Come with me.’ We went charging out of the reception room in Hyderabad House into the kitchen, where she got hold of the chef, bawled him out, told him he had got it wrong, told him how he ought to have done it and, in front of him and me, proceeded to give another demonstration as to how it should be done. All this in the margins of running India, and it was very characteristic of her, I think. Wright (Chair): Robert, that is a wonderful story. Can we bring it back now to the role of the High Commission itself? I am delighted to hear you say, and I hope people will take note of this, that your first priority was to get to know as many Indians as possible. Apologies to those to whom I have previously told this story—it is not why I am interrupting you—which was from a predecessor when I was appointed Ambassador to Saudi Arabia,9 who gave me one of the best bits of advice of my life: he said, ‘If it moves, call on it.’ Robert, if I may, I will now ask David to speak. By all means—all of you— be ready to come in, and I am indeed prepared to take questions from the audience, but for the moment I would like to turn to David. Sir David Goodall: Thank you very much, and thank you for the invitation to heckle. I would echo a lot of what Sir Robert has said.10 I, too, had no previous experience of India at all. It had never really occurred to me that I would end up in India; in a sense, I think Mrs Thatcher11 sent me to India. I do not know whether coming fresh to India that was a handicap or a help. If you go to a country where you have served in a more junior capacity, you already know a lot of people, you know where people fit in, you know what the recent history of the place is and of the people you meet, and so on. Going to India more or less cold, I realised that almost everybody one met and had to deal with had a history, a political history and a relationship with Mrs Gandhi during the Emergency—being on her side or against her—and that you were walking into a dense, highly politicised, highly political and complicated environment. Like Robert, I thought the first thing to do was to get to know as many people as you can. We had to do that by a great deal of entertaining and a great deal of calling on people. We very soon discovered that what we came to think of as discussion lunches were an extremely good weapon for getting to know people and getting to understand India, how the Indians felt and so on. That is the first thing. One thing that struck me very much when you think of the role of the High Commission – and I still think is true: the personal role of the High 8
Hyderabad House was built in 1926 by Edwin Lutyens as the Delhi residence for the Nizam of Hyderabad. It is now used by the Government of India for official functions. 9 UK Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1984-6. 10 Written addendum by Sir David Goodall: ‘Not least about the importance of travel. There were the three Deputy High Commissions—in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras (now Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai)—to visit regularly; all the separate state governments to get on terms with, along with the leading provincial politicians; British aid projects to see; and of course the vast and varied landscape, the scale and diversity of India, to get a feel for.’ 11 Margaret Thatcher (Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven), British Prime Minister, 1979-90.
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