Lucky
Dip – Memoir or Autobiography?
Richard
Thomas C.M.G.
16/6/23
It was with great
pleasure that the Lit. Soc. welcomed back one of its former luminaries with
lifelong roots in Winchelsea to discuss his recent book, Lucky Dip,
in which his diplomatic career is scrutinised by that most unforgiving
instrument, the retrospectoscope. Immediately our speaker drew the audience’s
attention to the intrinsic tension in the title, a dynamic etymological
equilibrium destined to tilt tantalisingly one way or the other during his talk
even sometimes inviting the emphatically rhetorical question – “Does it
matter?”. He ruminated on the wide spectrum in the final assessment of
diplomatic careers, from the celebrity glitterati of the ambassadorial circuit
to the unsung, industrious pit ponies tasked with collecting the material
beneath the surface.
Richard’s first 18 months of life were spent
in Petronella’s Plat, offering an inspiring view of the splendid
architectural torso which currently constitutes,
St. Thomas’s Parish Church only for this quintessentially English idyll to be
disrupted by an enforced evacuation to Canada with the outbreak of World War II. His teenage memory bank yielded the angular
shade of Vita Sackville-West in suitably masculine garb, her horticultural enthusiasm
signalled by secateurs in the top pocket of her shirt. The redoubtable grande dame of
Sissinghurst shared a belief with Richard’s parents in the revitalising effect
of the country air of the High Weald on the deprived urban youth of London’s
East End and they co-operated on this project for several years. Next came
Oxford, the Civil Service Exam and a first posting to the Commonwealth
Relations Office and an ambience of striking informality – afternoon tea with
the minister and his secretary sometimes graced with the presence of the latter’s
husband, a serving mounted policeman wont to tether his horse to the Office
railings. As Earl Grey receded in his
professional rear view mirror, a posting to Accra in Ghana landed Thomas in the
tense atmosphere of decolonisation where he succeeded in facilitating the
defection of a dissident Hungarian journalist and in deploying his burgeoning
diplomatic charm to finesse from a rather hostile Ghanaian government his
marriage service, and an enduring partnership with Catherine; a flame initially
lit at an ANZAC Day party at the Australian Embassy there. The roll of the diplomatic dice was to take
him to the excitement of N.A.T.O. headquarters in Brussels during the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Aid Section in New Delhi and the
friendship of the celebrated BBC correspondent, Mark Tully and a career
development stint at the Royal United Services Institute before alighting as no.
2 at the Prague Embassy in 1979, only to be given the run of the place as the
Ambassador cashed in four and a half months of banked home leave. This was an intoxicating challenge and the
Ambassador’s return left our hero a bit deflated. By successfully surfing a wave of managerial restructuring
within the service, Richard beached in Iceland as head of a “mini mission”. Although this assignment initially instilled gloomy
foreboding in the Thomas family, Iceland’s long winter nights were successfully
absorbed in their biorhythms, the lively polyglot president much admired and
the anomaly of the huge N.A.T.O. base at Keflavik in a nation with no army duly
factored in. In the dog days of the
Soviet Empire, Richard took on the role of Ambassador to Bulgaria as this most
loyal of Moscow’s satellites was busily expunging its residual Ottoman legacy
by ethnically cleansing its Turkish minority.
Soon, Western diplomats were able to declare Victory Day, in what they
considered a Righteous Conflict, with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact
although the Communists in Sofia managed another year in power, rebranded as
the Socialist Party. After 1400 years of
alternatives Bulgaria finally glimpsed the sunlit uplands of democratic
pluralism and 96 new parties were ready to try the experiment. Unfortunately, the sun revealed a dystopic
system of State orphanages to which a host of disabled children had been
consigned. Catherine joined in the
challenge of rehabilitating the system’s victims. After a busy but rewarding 5 years in the
Balkans, one final posting in the Caribbean beckoned before compulsory
retirement at 60. Retirement was to bring a detached, delectable dilettantism,
lecturing on cruise ships and submitting articles to journals and blogs when
touched by a suitable Muse.
So, at the end, how did
the speaker’s etymological equilibrium between memoir and autobiography fare
and did it even matter? The audience was
entertained by a series of vignettes of diplomatic life and the equilibrium was
judiciously maintained, sparing the listeners a plunge into the narcissism of
small differences.
