Customer Reviews

Daughters of Britannia: The Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives

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I think the first reviewer is being a little unfair towards this book. Yes, it skips around chronologically, but the aim of the book is to give the reader a taste of life in the diplomatic service from its beginnings to the current day, not be a biography of particular wives. On the first, the book succeeds very well. We hear about the glittering parties and receptions as well as the downright appalling conditions some families lived in (well into the 20th century, by the way). The wives are often in just as much danger as their husbands, and they are usually unpaid! Katie Hickman does a laudable job of giving these (mostly) admirable women their due.

The diplomatic wives depicted in this book were a hardy lot. Many of the stories brought forth the visions of the proper Englishman dressing for dinner each night in the jungle. Ms. Hickman grew up in the diplomatic service and displays much affection and admiration for these unsung ladies. The letters diary excerpts are interesting, sometimes poignant reminders of how isolated and far from home the ladies were.

The book has a peculiar organization, not by date or individuals, but by their duties. I found this annoying and difficult to follow. We meet a lady on page 6 and do not hear of her again until page 200. It skips between the 17th century to the 20th and back within two paragraphs. Consequently, I had never had a clear idea of who they were and when their stories were taking place.

Ms. Hickman is almost too discreet. Some of the incidents beg for clarification. (She is not a diplomat's daughter for nothing!) I didn't expect a tell-all tabloid style, but neither did I expect an almost Victorian reticence. The author clearly had done a great deal of research and took advantage of her own and her mother's recollections, but was in great need of a good editor.

A look at the lives of English Diplomatic Wives.I think it is well researched and has a lot of interesting info and funny anecdotes, which confirm to me once more that protocol is really a very unfortunate and unnecessary evil, of course the English actually revel in it whatever they may say.I think however a somewhat different approach to the subject would have been preferable.Instead of droning off the facts one after the other in a series of chapters, that often repeat the same occurence, choosing the lives of some interesting ladies telling us their stories might have made the book more pleasant to the reader.All in all it is not a boring read but it certainly is not everybody's cup of tea.

I live in Uruguay, so the part of the book that deals with the wife of a diplomat living in Uruguay (and the inaccuracies concerning that country) naturally caught my attention.

While one can sympathize with Mrs Jackson's troubles during her husband's kidnapping, this reader felt offended by the way in which Ms Hickman treats the Tupamaros, whom she (besides misspelling the name of their movement) defines as "terrorists" who were "dedicated to the overthrow of the current order of society". The current order of society was an increasingly dictatorial and authoritarian government, which in fact handed over the reins of the country to a military dictatorship two years after Mrs Jackson's ordeals, in 1973. That dictatorship, which was as bloody and savage as all US - sponsored dictatorships in South America, lasted for 12 years, ending in 1985.

While one cannot justify the kidnapping of any person, whatever its motives, it is strange that Ms Hickman completely fails to mention that (unlike the Tupamaros captured by the military dictatorship) Evelyn Jackson's husband was released unharmed and was never hurt, starved or otherwise tortured during the time he was held prisoner.

It is also hard to sympathize with either Mrs Jackson or the author when the latter approvingly quotes the former as saying (presumably of diplomats living in Third World countries) that "we're always in the middle of a revolution. They just wait for us to arrive, and then they get cracking". What a racist, patronizing, thoroughly unpleasant comment to make (and to quote).

This is not meant to be a review of the whole of the book, since I have not read it all. But finding such inaccuracies (and contempt) with regard to the country I find myself living in, I wonder whether there might not be others concerning countries that I don't know about. It should be taken into account that diplomats live in a sort of bubble, rarely getting to know the reality of the countries they are sent to - after all, day-to-day life is seldom a succession of cocktails and parties, especially in poor countries like the ones most of these diplomatic wives ended up in. While I respect personal suffering and tragedy such as the one this particular woman endured, I do not like to see a country pictured as a terrorists' haven when it is nothing of the sort and never was.