Duff Cooper was tremendously productive. His duties as British Ambassador in France exceeded the demands placed on diplomats today.
There was of course no video conferencing and telephone calls between Heads of State or even Foreign Ministers were rare. So, in the aftermath of the war, Duff was scuttling round various ministries in Paris shaping Anglo-French relations. Scuttling is not the mot juste. He had a Rolls-Royce, leaving a Ford for his wife to drive like a dodgem car.
Our foreign policy was ambitious; to create a Western Bloc of countries that would share a common currency. Relations with Russia were not easy. Molotov was a tough customer and would agree to nothing without Stalin’s da. The French often said non. Frequent, often fruitless conferences convened. Duff was a regular on the Flèche d’Or from Paris to Calais, then on a swish ferry to Dover and up to London on the Golden Arrow. Once he made the journey in time to welcome the French Foreign Minister when he landed at Northolt. Protocol was of great importance and still is. A friend living with his wife close to Paddington station was instructed by her to drive to Heathrow to meet her parents, although the Heathrow Express would have been much quicker and the welcoming obsequies (wrong word, unless they came in coffins) could have been performed at Paddington. She insisted protocol demanded they be met at the airport. She served in the Foreign Office and adorned with an OBE knew protocol must be observed. As they are still happily married I suppose he drove to the airport.
Usually, I say goodbye to a writer when I finish their book. This time I’m back with Duff reading a book he published in 1943 – I’m surprised there was enough paper in that time of shortage but it’s a slim volume. It’s a beautiful hardback “dedicated to the Jewish people to whom the world owes the Old and the New Testaments and much else in the realms of beauty and knowledge a debt that has been ill repaid”.
It is a biography of (King) David and, as I’m a bit rusty on much of the Old Testament, has brought to life the tribalism, power struggles, battles, friendships, enmities and betrayals of three thousand years ago. I wonder why his subject attracted him?