Description
Book SynopsisContemporary fiction. Which of us wouldn't savour the chance at the end of a job or an entire career to have printed and published to all our former colleagues, without fear of reprisal, our considered opinion of the whole shooting match? A chance, once and for all, to be brutally honest? To put the record straight? To settle a few scores along the way? It happens sometimes at drunken leaving-dos or in rogue emails sent too late on a Friday night, but in the diplomatic service it has been a formal almost ceremonious tradition for centuries. Up till 2006, a British ambassador quitting his post abroad or retiring for good would write a valedictory despatch circulated widely across government, from other far-flung members of the service to the Prime Minister himself. This was the parting shot, the opportunity to offer a personal view of the country he was leaving, the alcoholic intake of its population, the appalling behaviour of the vice-president's wife, the state of the capital's drain
Trade ReviewFast, fun, and remarkably deft:
a sharp-edged portrait that manages at once to be vicious, generous, and utterly good-natured * Kirkus Reviews *
