And Thereby Hangs a Tale

Author:Jeffrey Archer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 0312539533
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2010-09-14T05:00:00+00:00

10 DIPLOMAT

PERCIVAL ARTHUR Clarence Forsdykehis mother called him Percival, while the few friends he had called him Percy -- was born into a family which had played its part in ensuring that the sun never set on the British Empire.

Percy's grandfather, Lord Clarence Forsdyke, had been Governor General of the Sudan, while his father, Sir Arthur Forsdyke KCMG, had been our man in Mesopotamia. So, naturally, great things were expected of young Percy.

Within hours of entering this world, he had been put down for the Dragon prep school, Winchester College and Trinity, Cambridge, establishments at which four generations of Forsdykes had been educated.

After Cambridge, it was assumed that Percy would follow his illustrious forebears into the Foreign Office, where he would be expected at least to equal and possibly even to sur-pass their achievements. All might have gone to plan had it not been for one small problem: Percy was far too clever for his own good. He won a scholarship to the Dragon at the age of eight, an election to Winchester College before his eleventh birthday, and the Anderson Classics Prize to Trinity while he was still in short trousers. After leaving Cambridge with a double first in Classics, he sat the Civil Service exam, and frankly no one was surprised when he came top in his year.

Percy was welcomed into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with open arms, but that was when his problems began. Or, to be more accurate, when the Foreign Office's problems began.

The mandarins at the FCO, who are expected to identify high flyers worthy of being fasttracked, came to the reluctant conclusion that, despite Forsdyke's aca-demic achievements, the young man lacked common sense, possessed few social skills and cared little for the diplomatic niceties required when representing your country abroad -- something of a disadvantage if you wish to pursue a career in the Foreign Office.

During his first posting, to Nigeria, Percy told the Minister of Finance that he had no grasp of economics. The problem was that the minister didn't have any grasp of economics, so Percy had to be dispatched back to England on the first available boat.

After a couple of years in administration, Percy was given a second chance, and sent to Paris as an assistant secretary. He might have survived this posting had he not told the French President's wife at a government reception that the world was overpopulated, and she wasn't helping matters by producing so many children. Percy had a point, as the lady in question had seven offspring and was pregnant at the time, but he was still to be found packing his bags before lunch the following day. A further spell in admin followed before he was given his third, and final, chance.

On this occasion he was dispatched to one of Her Majesty's smaller colonies in Central Africa as a deputy consul. Within six months he had managed to cause an altercation between two tribes who had lived in harmony for over a century. The

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