Diplomatic Adventures

A behind-the-scenes look at the life of a junior diplomat.Moscow in the Cold War. Karachi during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971. Buenos Aires at the time of Peron s death. Three critical chapters of twentieth-century history and as a young diplomat, Tony Rossiter had a box seat.In Moscow in 1968, Western diplomats were kept under surveillance, their flats were bugged, and they were harassed by the KGB. From Moscow, Tony went to Karachi, a quasi-colonial world of servants and snobby expatriates. When war broke out, his young family huddled together as bomb blasts shook the walls. After a week of air attacks, women and children were belatedly evacuated. Transferred to Buenos Aires, it was out of the frying pan into the fire. Tony arrived, shortly after Peron s reinstatement as president, as the Montoneros urban guerrillas were stepping up terrorist attacks against Western targets.Unlike the memoirs of most former diplomats, this book is not about high-level bureaucracy. Instead, it provides rare insight into the day-to-day life of a young man working at the coalface. Rossiter s background was unusual for his era, and this vivid and evocative memoir offers a unique glimpse behind the curtain of international diplomacy.