1. mit mildernden Umständen: With mitigating circumstances.
2. Houphouet-Boigny: Félix Houphouët-Boigny, President of Côte d’Ivoire, 1960–93.
3. ‘Ils nous traitent toujours d’esclaves’: ‘They always treat us as slaves.’
4. Ex-President Apithy … Kings of Abomey: Sourou-Migan Apithy, President of Dahomey (today Benin), 1964–5. Abomey was the capital of Dahomey.
1. Jamahiriya: The year before Williams arrived in Tripoli, Qadhafi rechristened his country as the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Loosely translated as ‘state of the masses’, Jamahiriya was a system of (supposedly) direct democracy, based around tribal identities, and without political parties. To worldly diplomats familiar with the usual political flora and fauna, it was as if a new species had been discovered.
2. Notting Hill: We’ve had to make substantial cuts to what is a long despatch, and this refers to an earlier passage about the ‘Green Book’, Qadhafi’s 1975 political tract. Williams actually held Qadhafi rather highly as a political philosopher. By making the concept of ‘direct people power’ central to his theory of government (however much he traduced that concept in practice) Qadhafi was in step with the prevailing political theory of the 1970s, the ambassador thought. ‘The idea that a small pastoralist’s son, sitting in a tent (and not bothering, for instance, to read anything very much), could conceivably have discovered the answer to problems which have baffled political theorists for three thousand years may seem difficult for us to accept. But that, while being so ill-informed, he yet anticipated a current trend of thought is still, surely, remarkable.’ The Notting Hill reference is probably a nod to G. K. Chesterton’s 1904 debut novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill.
1. F.L.N.: The National Liberation Front fought a bloody eight-year guerrilla war with France (1954–62). Seven hundred thousand Algerians died to secure their independence, along with 30,000 French soldiers.
2. Boumediène: Houari Boumediène seized power in a 1965 coup and ruled Algeria as President and head of the military-backed Revolutionary Council until his death in 1978.
1. PAC: The Pan Africanist Congress split off from the African National Congress (ANC) in 1959 and continues to play a minor role as a political party in South Africa today.
2. AZAPO: The Azanian People’s Organization was formed in 1978 as a campaigning organization against apartheid. Rejecting the concept of South African statehood under white rule, black groups called their country Azania instead.
3. Steve Biko: Activist and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement. Biko became a martyr to many in the anti-apartheid struggle after he died violently in 1977 while in police custody.
1. deux chevaux: Citroën 2CV (literally, ‘two horses’).
1. A.D.C.: Aide-de-camp (literally, ‘camp assistant’); a personal secretary assigned to a senior military officer or head of state.
2. ‘sottises’: Foolishnesses, stupidities.
3. ‘Walter and Connie’ series: A global hit in the early 1960s, the BBC’s Walter and Connie taught students through the power of television how to enunciate English verbs and nouns correctly in a range of everyday situations, such as ‘At the Seaside’ and ‘Connie’s Sewing Party’.
4. ‘feuilleton’: Serial.
5. ‘Le Sein’: ‘The Breast’.
1. Munich horror: The 1972 Olympic Games were marred by an atrocity, the killing of eleven Israeli athletes and support personnel by Palestinian terrorists. The Munich massacre happened just three weeks before Balfour Paul wrote his despatch.
1. SALT II: Brezhnev did in fact sign this second Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaty in 1979, a year after Keeble wrote his despatch.
1. Bulgarian atrocities: In 1876 Gladstone was stirred out of semi-retirement and into print by the massacre of 15,000 Christians in Bulgaria. His famous pamphlet Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East laid into the ruling Turks (‘elaborate and refined cruelty … abominable and bestial lusts’), and into his nemesis, Prime Minister Disraeli, who had dismissed reports of the killings as ‘coffee-house babble’.
2. J. D. Bourchier: In 1913 the Balkan correspondent of The Times acted as a go-between in the negotiations that ended the Balkan Wars. Bourchier vocally, but ultimately unsuccessfully, opposed peace treaties that saw poor Bulgaria cede territory, first to Romania, and then in 1919 – after the First World War (in which Bulgaria was once again on the losing side) – to Greece and Yugoslavia.
3. King Boris: Boris III ruled Bulgaria from 1918 to 1943. A true railway nut, when the Orient Express passed through Bulgaria, King Boris insisted on driving it.
4. Treaty of Berlin: In 1878 the Congress of Berlin redrew the map of the Balkans, and saw Bulgaria humiliated, losing Macedonia to the Turks. Bulgaria’s efforts three decades later to remedy the situation led to the Balkan Wars. Lord Beaconsfield was Benjamin Disraeli, who signed the treaty for Britain. His liberal adversary was Gladstone – see note 1 above.
1. pre-1971 Pakistan: The Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 ended with Bangladesh – East Pakistan as it was – seceding from the western rump. It was a humiliating defeat for Pakistan, which saw a third of its army become prisoners of war in India.
1. Nanki-Poo: In The Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1885 comic opera, the love-lorn son of the Emperor goes disguised as a wandering minstrel.
1. Sir Arthur Grimble: Commissioner of the Gilberts in the 1920s, Grimble spent most of his career on small islands in the outer reaches of the empire. In a series of colourful books Grimble described the Stone Age myths and rituals of the Kiribati people, who once used him as human bait to catch a giant octopus.