A unique and glamorous book about British Imperial and post-Imperial architecture and a lively and evocative read for anyone interested in the international projection of British power and culture. British Embassies have a special role in our history. They represent our country in bricks and stone and have often expressed – at least in the eyes of foreigners – our national character. Whether they are Lutyens buildings in Washington, grand palaces in Europe, beautiful old colonial buildings in Asia, or secure compounds in the Middle East, they all have stories to tell and reveal the changing face of British diplomacy. A mixture of history, architectural description, diplomacy and anecdote, this large format picture book covers Residences and embassies in twenty-six countries to provide an authoritative text, accompanied by newly commissioned photography.

This text traces the history of three Far Eastern embassies through the vicissitudes of war and revolution against the background of an apparent steady decline of Western influence in Asia. Dr Hoare tracks the key events and people shaping the British view of Asia. Key 'dramatis personae' are Sir Harry Parkes, British Minister to Japan, China and Korea; Sir Ernest Satow, the student interpreter who became Minister in Tokyo and Peking, and in more recent years, Sir Charles Eliot, lover of big cars and scholar of Buddhism. This book will interest those wishing to know more about all aspects of Britain in East Asia, whether in the tense years of the Boxer troubles in China, during the wartime repatriation of Britons from Japan and the Japanese Empire, in the traumas of the Korean War, or during the excess of China's Cultural Revolution.

Embassies are integral to international diplomacy, their staff instrumental to inter-governmental dialogue, strategic partnerships, trading relationships and cultural exchange. But Embassies are also discreet political spaces. Notionally sovereign territory ‘immune’ from local jurisdiction, in moments of crisis Embassies have often been targets of protest and sites of confrontation. It is this aspect of Embassy experience that this collection of essays explores and Embassies in Crisis revisits flashpoints in the recent lives of Embassies overseas at times of acute political crisis. Ranging across multiple British and other embassy crises, unusually, this book offers equal insights to international historians and members of the diplomatic community.

This is an examination of how embassies work and cope during wartime, with a focus on the experiences of the British, American, and Indian embassies. During wartime, embassies assume different roles and face various situations. An embassy might represent a belligerent state while being situated in an enemy, an allied, or a neutral state. Conversely, it might represent a neutral state, while having to function in a belligerent state. How does an embassy's situation affect its priorities? How does it affect its staff and mission? The work and risks they face may vary greatly, but embassies play a key role in war, a time when they are required to give higher priority to military and political intelligence while facing daily risks of attacks and managing media and high-ranking visitors. "Embassies in Armed Conflict" examines these issues and the problems wartime embassies encounter by looking primarily at the experiences of American, British, and Indian embassies. Written by a leading expert, the book aims to both examine the role of wartime embassies and to provide guidance for those who serve - or wish to serve - in the Foreign Service. The volumes in the series are relatively short handbooks aimed at beginning practitioners and advanced university students. The volumes highlight the ways foreign policy is implemented through the apparatus of diplomacy, the diplomatic system, and diplomats and will discuss: specific aspects of diplomacy, such as the concept of diplomatic relations, the consequences of cutting off diplomatic relations, diplomatic immunity, etc., and key diplomatic activities and events, such as an international crisis, or a summit meeting. Such books will focus on the conduct of diplomacy rather than its politics. The focus will be on the contemporary practice of diplomacy, not on foreign policy or the theoretical direction of diplomacy.

Since the early twentieth century the resident embassy has been supposed to be living on borrowed time. By means of an exhaustive historical account of the contribution of the British Embassy in Turkey to Britain s diplomatic relationship with that state, this book shows this to be false. Part A analyses the evolution of the embassy as a working unit up to the First World War: the buildings, diplomats, dragomans, consular network, and communications. Part B examines how, without any radical changes except in its communications, it successfully met the heavy demands made on it in the following century, for example by playing a key role in a multitude of bilateral negotiations and providing cover to secret agents and drugs liaison officers.