Welcome, everyone. My name is Glenn Dyson, and I'm joined today by Alexander Mercuris and Ian Proud.

So, Ian Proud is a, well, I was a member of the British Diplomatic Service from 1999 to

2003. He also served at the British Embassy in Moscow between those important years between 2014 and 19, and recently published his

memoirs about, in his words, how British diplomacy in Russia failed during those years. So,

welcome to the both of you. Thanks for inviting me. Great pleasure and delighted to have you in.

And I was saying that just before we started the programme,

that I found your book, a misfit in Moscow.

Absolutely compelling read.

And it kept me up long into the night.

It was an absolute page turn.

And extremely interesting, and very interesting to see what was going on in the embassy in Moscow

and in the foreign office during this critical period when we basically took a disastrous turn.

And the thought that I had about this, the immediate sense I got from it,

is that you're working very hard in Moscow.

And I think it's fair to say you weren't entirely alone in trying to work hard in Moscow.

There were some people in Moscow who were also trying to do things to build some kind of a dialogue with the Russians, perhaps even a relationship with the Russians.

And what was really holding things back more than anything else, this is the sense I got, is a complete lack of interest in London.

Occasional flashes, perhaps Boris Johnson interested

sometimes, but overall a sense that London just wasn't engaged in the way that it should have been.

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say it's a lack of interest. I think there's been a shift

in the UK with the past kind of two decades where ministers and their advisors and Whitehall

didn't have all the answers. And certainly when Frith Hammond became foreign secretary,

...