Inside the Foreign Office - Keeping power and influence That is the priority task of Sir Simon Macdonald, the Permanent Secretary – the c...hief civil servant - in a Foreign Office headed, for the moment, by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Politicians may come and go, but civil servants remain. We follow the diplomats as they wrestle with a series of crises and challenges. At the United Nations in New York, as world leaders gather for the special General Assembly week, the UK team juggle tasks from the delicate matter of who sits where – and the pr
Inside the Foreign Office - Brits in Trouble The way most Britons come into contact with the Foreign Office is when they get int...o trouble overseas. We follow three diplomats as they try to aid Brits who unexpectedly find themselves in serious trouble on the other side of the world. 10 young backpackers are thrown into a squalid overcrowded jail in Cambodia, facing pornography charges they all deny; an elderly couple haven’t been heard from since their house was destroyed by the most powerful hurricane ever to hit the Caribbean; and a 17-
Hiroshima and Nagasaki This programme draws on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World W...ar II to explore what lessons have been learnt to aid the understanding of contemporary nuclear weapons issues. It contrasts the size of the destructive power of the bombs dropped on Japan with the much greater effect the thermonuclear weapons of today would have on society.
The programme raises questions about the dangers of proliferation amongst new nuclear weapons states, the role of deterrence and the likelih