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Daughters of Britannia: The Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives [Paperback]

Katie Hickman (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Flamingo; New Ed edition (8 July 2011)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0006387802
  • ISBN-13: 978-0006387800
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 141,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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More About the Author

Katie Hickman
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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

As the daughter of a diplomat, Katie Hickman is well-situated to write about the lives of the women who, from the 17th century onward, have traversed the globe as partners of Britain's ambassadors. These women are more than simply bored socialites, they are indispensable companions, intrepid travellers and, in many cases, exemplary ambassadors for their country. Hickman details the lives of the female ambassadors, from flamboyant characters such as Vita Sackville-West, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the "bolter" Emma Hamilton, to lesser-known contemporary stoics like Jane-Ewart-Biggs, whose husband, the British Ambassador to Eire, was killed by an IRA car bomb in 1976, and Veronica Atkinson and family, who cowered in the basement of the British Embassy in Bucharest during the 1989 uprising that overthrew the Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceaucescu.

What frequently unites Hickman's wildly different subjects is their loneliness--drawing on letters, diaries and memoirs, she portrays women who had to discipline themselves to adapt (often ingeniously) to unfamiliar cultures, far away from friends and family--many, in particular, were separated from their children, who would be sequestered at boarding school back in Britain--while maintaining an unimpeachable public image. "I shall be obliged to travel three or four days between Buda and Essek without finding any house at all, through desert plains covered with snow, where the cold is so violent many have been killed by it", wrote Lady Mary Wortley Montagu of her treacherous journey to Constantinople in 1716. Almost 300 years later, in 1996, Stephanie Hopkinson wryly itemised the "bizarre qualifications" necessary for daily diplomatic life in a Sarajevo under siege: "Ability to ... apply make-up in the dark; aptitude for bathing in a cold teacup and keeping one's hair/self/clothes clean and uncrumpled as long as possible ... vivid imagination which converts tinned frankfurters, bread and rice into smoked salmon/steak and chips...". Resourcefulness is a common link between the Daughters of Britannia; Katie Hickman has written a fascinating book. --Catherine Taylor

Review

Her last book, A Trip to the Light Fantastic, received extraordinarily good reviews:

‘The most ambitiously imaginative sort of travel writing’
- Patrick Skene Catling

‘Magic is at the heart of Hickman’s narrative. Her characters would not seem out of place in the oeuvre of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Isabel Allende’
- Sunday Times

‘Mexico will not have been portrayed more vividly since Graham Greene’s The Lawless Roads… Enchanting’
- Geoffrey Moorhouse, Daily Telegraph

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Sometime at the beginning of April 1915 a lonely Kirghiz herdsman wandering with his flocks in the bleak mountain hinterland between Russian and Chinese Turkistan would have beheld a bizarre sights a purposeful-looking Englishwoman in a solar topi, a parasol clasped firmly in one hand, striding towards the very top of the 12,000-foot Terek Dawan pass. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Fascinating! 17 Sep 2003
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
As an expat who sees the local embassy and its life from the outside, this book was a real eye-opener. It has a wealth of detail and information on what really goes on behind the scenes of the genteel receptions etc held at what here is a beautiful period residence, but may well be less than ideal when you're actually living 'above the shop'. Most of the information is drawn from many years ago, but there are plenty of examples from recent years too. I have to disagree with the reviewer who said that s/he found it difficult to keep track of the various time periods; I found the contrast between 'then' and 'now' was brought out all the more clearly by the juxta-position of the information from both periods. A compelling read for anyone interested in history, life, and just what Britannia expected, for no or little return, of her ambassadors' wives.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Although, at times, I had a hard time with the jumping of time periods, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A really interesting subject for study. Hickman did a womderful job in touching all the bases of the life of a diplomatic wife. I originally got this just to round out an order and it turned out to be the best book in the box!
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
Ambassadresses 'Extraordinary': Whether you are a diplomat, a social historian, an armchair traveler, or just love a good adventure story, this book is for you. Katie Hickman's account of British ambassadresses, some eccentric 'oddballs', others quite ordinary women, all forced by marriage into the most extraordinary of lives, is a fascinating book.

This is political history in a domestic context, social history at its best. Ms. Hickman is not only a remarkable writer, she is also an excellent editor. She lets her diplomatic wives speak for themselves. It must have taken a great deal of diligent research to find the correspondence that tells such a powerful story. The anecdotes range across the spectrum of human emotion: the thrill of a visit to the Sultan's jewel-encrusted harem in Constantinople, the shock and tragedy of assassination in Dublin, the embarrassment of employing a butler who assures the dinner guests that he never washes his hands.

While Ms. Hickman confesses to her own preference for the nomadic and peripatetic life, she also deals very fairly with the hardships that diplomatic life presents to wives, the dangers, the medical problems, the decisions over children and careers, to name a few. Her final chapter on the new diplomatic spouses, namely men, who accounted for 13% of the Foreign Offices's spouses in 1998, is a delight.

This book belongs with other 'great' books about diplomatic life including "Pepita" (Vita Sackville-West) and "Don't Tell Alfred" (Nancy Mitford). Like Katie Hickman, this reviewer is also the daughter of a British ambassadress (albeit American-born), and can only say Yes! Yes! Yes! to this tribute to a class of women who supported their husbands' profession with so much courage, and resourcefulness. Thank you, Katie Hickman, for writing it.

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