A Word Before Leaving

A Former Diplomat's Weltanschauung

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: “Here John Pedler 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; and as a writer he puts a thousand stories together and makes elegant and convincing sense of them.” This book is for all those worldwide with an interest in foreign affairs who are increasingly concerned about climate change/over-population, and the spread of religious violence - fearing that the world’s politicians may be taking us in the wrong direction. John Pedler, now 86, joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1951 and has ever since been involved with foreign affairs. This is his weltanschauung (world-view), a new genre, in which he sets out how he has come to see our world and what may lie beyond. Subjects include: Russia and the EU; our wars: Vietnam, Afghan, and Iraq; sex in politics; ‘political correctness’; advertising; media self-censorship and News International; world religions and Islam: ‘moderate’, Wahabist, and ‘Jihadist’. It’s in the form of answers to his adult children’s questions so it’s an easy, and often gripping, read. As well as his diplomatic postings in Europe and the Far East, John Pedler was a war correspondent in Vietnam, a businessman in Mao’s China, and the first Director of the Cambodia Trust. He worked for the Bosnian government during the siege of Sarajevo. He was educated at the Browne and Nicholls School, Cambridge, Mass. USA and the London School of Economics (where he took a subsidiary course in Comparative Religion).