The Ambassador’s Wife’s Tale

A memoir of life as a British ambassador’s wife amid the upheavals of the late 1960sThe year that Julia Miles got married and so became part of the British government’s Foreign Office machine was a seminal year in world politics. 1968 saw the murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the USSR invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Baader-Meinhof gang introducing modern terrorism to Europe, and three hijackings launching a spate of terror in the air. Civil unrest by students in Paris and massive general strikes almost brought down the French government and a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in London against the Vietnam War ended in violence and injury. Her book is set against this background of insecurity and upheaval which has endured until the present. Julia entertains and informs with a series of vignettes which throw light into previously unseen corners of Embassy life.