ES Lifestyle newsletter The latest lifestyle, fashion and travel trends Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive trends and interviews from fashion, lifestyle to travel every week, by email Update newsletter preferences

Henry Wotton, the 17th-century writer and diplomat, once observed that an ambassador ‘is an honest man sent abroad to lie and intrigue for the benefit of his country’.

And the Elizabethans didn’t even have leaked emails to worry about. Sir Kim Darroch was well-known in Washington, DC, for his inscrutable discretion and his patriotic Union Jack phone case. But, after confidential memos calling the Trump administration ‘clumsy and inept’ were leaked earlier this month, the British ambassador to the US was forced to resign, calling into question the role of diplomacy in the modern age.

‘By its very nature, diplomacy involves secret communications between states, and between envoys and their governments,’ says David Dunn, professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham. ‘Indeed the word itself — diplomacy — means a paper folded in two to keep it confidential. It is the embassy’s job to rep – resent the home government abroad but also, crucially, to provide candid analysis of the state of politics and leadership in the receiving state.’

These uncensored judgements are the reason why the diplomatic bag, used to transport sensitive documents between the embassy and the home nation, is inviolable to searches or interference (a privilege that has been What the saw abused throughout history to transport everything from Cuban cigars for Churchill to shipments of cocaine). But as sealing wax has been swapped for social media, and Queen’s messengers have been replaced by encrypted emails, what is life really like for ambassadors in the 21st century?

‘The job of an ambassador covers a wide range of activities,’ says Peter Millett, former ambassador to Jordan and Libya. ‘During Foreign Office training you’re given three main objectives. The first is the security of the UK, in terms of terrorism and so on. The second is prosperity, promoting British trade and export and helping British companies. The third is consular and protecting British citizens. You have to roll up your sleeves, lobby the government, introduce British companies to local suppliers, manage your staff. You’re also the face of the UK in your host nation, so there are very few ambassadors who are not on social media now.’

The skill set of a good diplomat goes beyond charm in multiple languages and a good poker face. As Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador in Washington, put it in his book, DC Confidential: ‘You need a quick mind, a hard head, a strong stomach, a warm smile and a cold eye.’

The most memorable ambassadors go beyond the stuffy black-tie receptions. Matthew Barzun, US ambassador to the UK from 2013 to 2017, and his curator wife Brooke, installed a skateboard ramp and turntables at Winfield House, the neo-Georgian residence in Regent’s Park. Their star-studded parties became the stuff of legend, with Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Victoria Beckham all clamouring for invites to eat tacos and drink beer with the denim-clad diplomat.

Clearly the role has evolved a great deal since ambassadors were first used to disperse information between states in 17th-century Italy. ‘Probably the biggest single change to diplomacy was the introduction of the telegraph in the middle of the 19th century,’ says Oliver Miles, former ambassador to Libya, Luxembourg and Greece. ‘This meant that ambassadors were no longer truly “plenipotentiary” [having full powers], as they are still described.’

Nevertheless, adds Miles, the job is still recognisably the same as the one performed by Sir Jerome Bowes, England’s ambassador to Russia, sent by Queen Elizabeth I to the court of Ivan the Terrible. His tasks included asserting the authority of his queen as the equal of the tsar, and freeing a British widow whose Dutch husband had been roasted to death. For his own part, Miles recalls organising toilets for UN VIPs, passing a secret message from the Luxembourg monetary authority to the Bank of England, and interceding with a Saudi prince to get a British lorry driver’s sentence to flogging commuted.

“People in the diplomatic world do play golf, drink gin and have affairs...” Brigid Keenan

It can be a high-risk job and, in many postings, security is a major concern. ‘In Libya I couldn’t go anywhere without four armed men and two armoured vehicles,’ says Millett. ‘It can be very tough on your family. We sent our daughters to boarding school, so that separation was painful and we missed them very much. When I started this job, you didn’t get a say at all in where you were sent. I once got a phone call saying, “Get yourself on a plane to Caracas,” but now they publicise the list of posts in advance and you can put yourself forward for the placements you want. A lot of people only want to go to the adventurous places like Outer Mongolia but, I think as you get married and have a family, you want somewhere more comfortable like Paris or Washington.’ Postings tend to be a maximum of three to five years, to avoid what’s known in the trade as ‘going native’.

Although the image of ambassadors living lavish lifestyles in luxury residences on the taxpayers’ expense persists (the £12m penthouse in New York for the UK’s consul general and trade commissioner made headlines in March) Millett says that’s not always the case. ‘The salary is not fantastic in comparison with, say, the CEO of a multinational company,’ he says. ‘Most ambassadors are on around £60k, the top ones are on £110k. You might get to live in a historic, amazing residence but in Athens the embassy was a beautiful house with a ballroom, while the ambassador’s living quarters was a two-bedroom flat in the attic.’

Although it’s still a field dominated by white men who went to public school, things are becoming less pale, male and stale. As high commissioner to Mozambique, NneNne Iwuji-Eme is the UK’s first black female ambassador (high commissioner is the equivalent to an ambassador in Commonwealth countries). ‘Things are changing in the Foreign Office and I’m an example of that,’ she says. ‘We now have 49 female heads of post, and in Africa nearly 50 per cent of our ambassadors are women. The misconception is that we eat Ferrero Rocher and cucumber sandwiches all day and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Although a big part of this job involves socialising and building relationships, I’m a single mum so I have to get the work-life balance right.’

Jane Marriott, who is soon to be the high commissioner to Kenya and was formerly the ambassador to Yemen, found it took a while before certain people acknowledged her authority. ‘When I was younger, I’d walk into a room and people would glance behind me because they’d be looking for a man in a suit and wondering where the “real” ambassador was,’ she says. ‘But either things are getting better or I have a few more lines on my face now.

There is still a real lack of understanding about what I do, even among my friends and family who’ve followed my career for 20 years. In the 19th century, an ambassador would be a man of a certain age who was lord and master, but now it’s about bringing together a senior leadership team and collaborating with other departments such as DFID [Department for International Development].’ Marriott says one of the big challenges of the job is maintaining a personal life. ‘I was seeing a lovely chap for five years but he didn’t want to go overseas,’ she says. ‘When I was in Yemen, I had three cars full of men with guns following me everywhere I went, which definitely curtailed the social life.’

Being a ‘trailing spouse’ (as the Foreign Office still calls partners of ambassadors) comes with challenges of its own. Brigid Keenan’s husband Alan Waddams was EU ambassador to Syria and Azerbaijan in the 1990s. ‘When we first arrived in Syria, my husband invited about 60 people over for dinner,’ she recalls. ‘We had a powercut and a huge rat appeared in the kitchen and the maid beat it to death with a broom handle. Obviously people in the diplomatic world do play bridge and golf, drink gin and tonics and have affairs, but not as much as they used to before women started working.’ So those who expect the diplomatic service to be a glamorous whirlwind of jetsetting and parties may be disappointed.

It is high-pressure, high-stakes work, but that’s not to say it can’t also be fun. Just don’t expect unlimited Ferrero Rocher.