Introduction
The entrance to the British Embassy, Paris.
This event comprised of a witness seminar examining the history, role and functions of the UK Embassy in Paris, principally from the testimonies and perspectives of those FCO officials who served there. It also officially launched the publication of a new book: The Paris Embassy: British Ambassadors and Anglo-French Relations 1944–79,1 and several of the contributors offered their perspectives on previous British Ambassadors to Paris. The event was the sixth and final in a series of witness seminars sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and it is part of the Witness Seminar Programme of the Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH), King’s College London. The other witness seminars were: the British High Commission in New Delhi (17 November 2011); the British Embassy in Beijing (held on 7 June 2012); the British High Commission in Canberra (8 November 2012); the UK Mission to the United Nations New York (22 May 2013); and the British Embassy/ High Commission in Pretoria (26 November 2013). Since 1986 the ICBH Witness Seminar Programme has conducted nearly 100 witness seminars on a variety of subjects, two in particular have related to the functions of UK Embassies: Washington (held in 1997)2 and Moscow (held in 1999).3 Both of these witness seminars were chaired by Lord Wright of Richmond and both have been published. These witness seminars have been well received by the academic community, who have increasingly come to see that it is important to examine and analyse how Embassies and High Commissions have worked historically in the promotion of British policy overseas, and also by practitioners. A recent volume (2009) on The Washington Embassy, edited by Michael Hopkins, Saul Kelly and John Young, demonstrated precisely why it is necessary to know more about how UK Embassies operate and has suggested why Embassies will continue to be important for those who study diplomacy. The volume, as the introduction suggested, offered ‘valuable insights into change and continuity in British diplomatic practice’ over the period; it also
1
R Pastor-Castro and JW Young (eds), The Paris Embassy: British Ambassadors and Anglo-French Relations, 1944-79 (2013). 2 G Staerck (ed), ‘The Role of the British Embassy in Washington: Witness Seminar’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 12, No3 (1998), pp. 115-38. 3 G Staerck (ed), ‘The Role of HM Embassy in Moscow: Witness Seminar’, Contemporary British History, Vol.14, No.3 (2001), pp. 149-61. 4