Hello, I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive

for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast

in 1993 and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

My cast away this week is an American diplomat. He was born in Honolulu but his life as the son

of a peripetetic soldier has left him he says without US routes. That hasn't prevented him from

serving his country well beginning in Africa and eventually rising to senior positions in the

Department of State in Washington. In 1990 he was surprised to be offered the job of Ambassador

to London by President Bush, the first career diplomat ever to be given the job. Then earlier this

year he was perhaps even more surprised and delighted when President Clinton asked him to stay on

an ambassador here has never before survived a change of presidency. My cast away is then the

United States ambassador to the court of St James Raymond's sites. Let's deal with the first

of those achievements first. It is true isn't it that the US ambassador to London is seen as one

of the great plum jobs and usually does go to put it bluntly to one of the president's rich supporters?

Well it's certainly as seen as a plum job and it has been not a job to which a career person has

ever been appointed. It's not always been accorded to somebody of vast wealth but one of the reasons

I was pleased to be able to come to do this job is to at least attempt to demonstrate that one

does not have to have great worldly goods in order to conduct the affairs of diplomacy here.

But it does help. I'm told the entertainment budget is quite small. I think it was

Alistair Cook who pointed out once that a former incumbent said the annual entertainment budget

just about 500 people on Independence Day be lemonade punch. Well there is some truth to that

and you have to take a somewhat no frills approach but it can be done. But why did George Bush

appoint you? I wonder why. Well I have always had I think the good judgment never to ask why

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