A Word Before Leaving

Sir Crispin Tickell, GCMG, one of Britain’s outstanding diplomats and one of the word’s leading proponents of ‘climate change’, says of this book: “John takes the broadest of views, ranging from politics and science to religion and beyond, and paints a picture of the world as most of us have yet to see it. As a former diplomat there is almost nowhere he does not know... he puts a thousand stories together and makes elegant, convincing sense of them.”

In this rare essay, John Pedler, now 86 – no longer with an axe to grind or a reputation to defend – tells us frankly how he comes to his particular world view: this is a new genre, the weltanschauung genre. John joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1951 and has been involved with current affairs ever since. His experiences have been markedly diverse. After his diplomatic postings in Europe and the Far East he was one of the first to report from inside Mao’s China during the ‘Cultural Revolution’ and (also for the Sunday Telegraph) he was a war correspondent in the Vietnam war. For six years, he ran a family business with China. He was co-founder and first Director of the Cambodia Trust for landmine victims, contributing then to the Financial Times. He worked for the Bosnian government during the siege of Sarajevo.

As a diplomatic consultant John warned against the war in Iraq, foreseeing that it would prove a turning point for the fortunes of the ‘West’. “As a student of Comparative Religion I’ve been urging greater knowledge of Islam if we are to counter the appeal to violence…”

Born in 1928, John was educated during World War II at the Browne and Nicholls School in Cambridge, Mass. U.S.A. returning to the UK after a stay in neutral Portugal. At the London School of Economics after World War II, he took an additional course in Comparative Religion. A Word Before Leaving will remain relevant for the spotlight it sheds far into the future. It is particularly topical now following the Republican landslide in the 2014 mid-term elections which imperil US leadership in taking the U-turn the world needs to replace today's confrontations with an era of international cooperation.