I’m a former diplomat and retired historian. I live with my wife Sarah in the gentle hills and valleys of the Welsh Marches near Offa’s Dyke and the start of Glyndwr’s Way. But I was born in Yorkshire in 1937, my father a farm labourer, my mother a domestic servant and miner’s daughter.
I have now published a family memoir which tells of my unlikely journey from this poor rural background to Cambridge University and on into the highest levels of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The purpose of my blog is to restore the many stories and details that had to be left out of my book. I will also explore further some of the significant themes about working class life and social inequalities. that have persisted through the last two centuries of British history.