Friday, 14 April 2023

A DIPLOMATIC LIFE John Harrison

                                 A DIPLOMATIC LIFE

John Harrison

Softback £11.50 & £3.00   P & P   UK 

How to order  


 By Post: Mail to Lynn Davidson, The Memoir Club, 34 Lynwood Way, South Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE34 8DB cheque payable to Lynn Davidson.
Cheque payable to Lynn Davidson

By Email memoirclub@msn.com

By bank transfer: Lynn Davidson, Barclays, 20 83 69    83948145


John Harrison was born into a diplomatic family. His father and maternal grandfather were both diplomats. He therefore developed a taste for foreign travel at an early age. Adventurous journeys to visit his parents in Brazil and Iran provide a forerunner to his subsequent career.
He carved out his own route across the world with postings to Burma, Laos, Ethiopia, Turkey, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Pakistan and finally as High Commissioner in Mauritius. All these assignments were interspersed with important jobs in London in both the Cabinet Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

He was witness to a number of military coups and their aftermath. Political drama was never far away and living conditions were often difficult. Amusing and untoward incidents abounded, as did opportunities to meet people from different cultures and travel to exotic and rarely visited parts of the world. Personal and family life are woven inextricably into his various professional roles, including the huge support received from his wife Jenny.
Since retirement in 1997, he has lived in Hampshire enjoying gardening, golf, more travel and family life.

INTRODUCTION

When my three children all got married within the next few years, and then grandchildren started coming along, I began to realise that none of them had much idea about my early life apart from snippets picked up in random family conversations. The children had no choice but to blend into the slightly unusual way of life my wife, Jenny, and I were leading. Being largely overseas meant that they did not have the firm roots that other UK-based families had.

The same had applied to me, having been born into a diplomatic family. We seemed to be regularly packing up and on the move. Not that I minded too much. I enjoyed the travel opportunities and I was fortunate to have the fallback of a welcoming wider family based mainly in Sussex.

Our four grandchildren were born within five years of each other. When they were young I had great fun reading and telling them bedtime stories. I invented a little pink pig that had strayed into our garden and had various meetings and adventures with the likes of Peter Rabbit (we had a vegetable area), Squirrel Nutkin and the Gruffalo with his mouse (who all lived in our small piece of woodland). I was always being asked for more, but I was running out of ideas and they were getting older.

It then occurred to me that I had actually myself had some quite exotic real-life adventures around the world, which might in due course be of interest to them. So I started writing up some of my early life experiences, mainly travels, but without really thinking at the time that this could develop into a full scale memoir. I had periodically kept a diary, and indeed quite a detailed one of travels to interesting places. I then began to join the dots; boarding schools, university life, holiday periods with kind relatives, joining the Foreign Office and first posts overseas. There seemed to be plenty of material from Burma, Ethiopia and Turkey worth writing about, not to mention what happened thereafter.

There would be a long road ahead requiring some detailed research and memory racking. But with more leisure time and long winter evenings it seemed feasible. So I persevered and dug deeper into my official life. Lockdown from coronavirus in early 2020 helped to increase the momentum. I received encouragement from friends and former colleagues, particularly Sir Jeremy Thomas, my ambassador in Luxembourg, and Sir Nicholas Barrington, my boss in both London and Pakistan.

Fortunately my mother had kept and returned to me most of the letters I had written home from overseas as well as Jenny’s very full newsletters. Between them they contained first-hand accounts of, and comments on, activities, events, visits and so on. They also provided valuable source information on names of places and people plus dates which might otherwise have become a little hazy. It took time sorting out the ephemeral from the more substantive items, which often then had to be related to the wider local context. But it was absorbing work, and a far cry from the original bedside or family stories.

Special thanks go to my wife, Jenny, who has been such a support since we first met at a UN Conference in Geneva in 1966. She has had to put up with periods of hardship and difficulty, both in England and overseas but, as will be apparent, we have shared many good times as well. She has helpfully remembered for me some of the stories and incidents I have described and, where necessary, corrected points of detail.

I would also like to thank my brothers Bruce and Michael, and also my cousin Bina Arbuthnott, for letting me describe some of the adventures we had together, particularly in the early part of my life. I am grateful too to friends and former colleagues who have encouraged me to tread this path.

More special thanks of course go to my three children James, Carolyn and Sarah who have shared the trials as well as some of the high spots of this long-running saga since they arrived on the scene. I have written this partly for them and their respective spouses Doreen, Dominic and David.

Nor do I wish to forget my parents who started me on this journey into diplomatic life and supported me along the way. I was never going to match the distinguished career of my father, Sir Geoffrey Harrison. A pity he did not put pen to paper in his retirement apart from a few lectures. But I may have derived some inspiration for this book from my mother who, in her nineties, published some memoirs called On the Fringe under the name of Katherine Harrison describing her experiences living in the realms of Hitler and Stalin.

REVIEW

Warmest congratulations on your book, which I have bought, read and much admired. Good cover picture, clear print and full of information .... and so concise. I would recommend it to anyone who might be interested.                   Sir Nicholas Barrington

Really enjoyed reading your memoirs .... the places visited, the people met
 
I couldn’t put it down. So well written
 
Really enjoyed your book. You write so well and fluidly. Some amazing travels
 
Greatly enjoyed reading your book .... gives helpful insights into the life of a diplomat
 
Most interesting .... a life lived to the full and often at full tilt
 
I was instantly hooked. Especially enjoyed reading about all your adventures
 
A good read


 

No comments:

Post a Comment