# Former “Diplomat” on Iraq, Gaza, and Espionage | Chris Merritt

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 30 May 2026, 1 h 40 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72227599/chris_merrit_spreaker.mp3

Former British Foreign Office official Chris Merritt joins us to discuss his time as a diplomat in Iraq, Gaza, and Jerusalem, including Basra’s deteriorating security situation, Iranian-backed militias, Hamas, the Fatah split, and the realities of doing diplomacy in war zones. He also breaks down how those experiences shaped his later work as a trauma psychologist and spy novelist, including Committed and his new book Octagon. Grab Chris' new book here:⬇️ https://amzn.eu/d/0haKB5uW Chris' other books:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07B9ZHBF5/allbooks?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=aufs_ap_ahdr_dsk_ab&pd_rd_w=O64uG&content-id=amzn1.sym.7e190e19-9f6f-4df8-807a-5a7608594741&pf_rd_p=7e190e19-9f6f-4df8-807a-5a7608594741&pf_rd_r=144-9783160-8516900&pd_rd_wg=RnoiZ&pd_rd_r=09cfe4a7-daad-4ab8-9dc1-dc378f894a38&ccs_id=6c35d69b-90e0-4701-8fc4-178090b51c0e Today's Sponsors: GhostBed ⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Van Man ⬇️ Go to http://vanman.shop/teamhouse and use code TEAMHOUSE for 15% off your first order. Quince⬇️ go to: https://www.quince.com/house for free shipping and 365 day returns For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ PRE ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 — Start / Chris Merritt joins The Team House 01:02 — Growing up near London, languages, and the road toward foreign service 05:03 — Learning Arabic and getting drawn into Middle East geopolitics 06:08 — Applying to the British Foreign Office and surviving the assessment process 10:10 — First Foreign Office job and wanting something more active 12:18 — Volunteering for Iraq and deploying to Basra in 2005 17:04 — Britain’s role in southern Iraq and the worsening IED threat 19:03 — Diplomatic work in a war zone: gathering ground truth in Basra 23:47 — Iranian-backed militias, helicopter shootdowns, and the badger conspiracy 27:41 — “Aggressive diplomacy” and working alongside the British military 30:05 — Rockets, mortars, and watching Basra deteriorate 32:53 — SAS contacts, close protection, and hostile-environment training 39:15 — Jerusalem, Gaza, and working the Palestinian side of the conflict 43:53 — Hamas wins elections, the Fatah split, and Gaza’s power struggle 47:26 — Trying to understand Hamas without being allowed to talk to them 50:07 — The Alan Johnston kidnapping and negotiating through Gaza intermediaries 51:40 — Why the Israel-Palestine conflict felt increasingly impossible to solve 57:17 — Israel’s rightward shift, Gaza after October 7, and the future of the region 01:01:37 — Returning to London, Gulf policy, and shifting toward psychology 01:05:25 — Leaving the Foreign Office and retraining as a trauma psychologist…

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I want to tell you tonight about my
[0:03] Speaker 1: new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, coming out June ninth.
[0:07] Speaker 1: I think, like a lot of you, I read in
[0:10] Speaker 1: high school the short story The Greatest Game, which is
[0:14] Speaker 1: almost a century old at this point, but it's the
[0:17] Speaker 1: classic premise of man hunting man for sport. This book
[0:22] Speaker 1: is based off of that a little bit, but also
[0:26] Speaker 1: on stories that I have heard over the years about
[0:29] Speaker 1: Safari guides that have actually taken hunting parties, wealthy people
[0:33] Speaker 1: hunting poachers in West Africa. That idea kind of cooked
[0:38] Speaker 1: off in my mind when I was asked to write
[0:41] Speaker 1: a novel and get back into writing fiction again. And
[0:44] Speaker 1: this book is about a ranger with the Ranger Reconnaissance
[0:47] Speaker 1: Company who's on a mission in West Africa and gets
[0:50] Speaker 1: kidnapped and hunted for sport by a group of wealthy
[0:53] Speaker 1: tech billionaires. I had a lot of fun writ in
[0:56] Speaker 1: this book, and I think you'll have a good time
[0:58] Speaker 1: reading it. It's quick, fast and furious, fast paced action
[1:04] Speaker 1: action novel, and I hope you all check it out.
[1:07] Speaker 1: It's up there. You can find it wherever books are sold,
[1:10] Speaker 1: the hard copy, the hardback, the soft cover, and also
[1:14] Speaker 1: the Kindle e book edition. We'll have some links down
[1:17] Speaker 1: in the description for you. The book comes out June ninth,
[1:21] Speaker 1: and I hope you all let me know what you
[1:23] Speaker 1: think of it. Hey, everyone, this is the Team House.
[1:38] Speaker 1: My name is Jack Murphy and we are here with
[1:40] Speaker 1: today tonight's guest or this morning's guest, depending on when
[1:45] Speaker 1: this is recorded. Chris Merritt. Chris Merritt is a former
[1:49] Speaker 1: member of the British Foreign Office who served in places
[1:53] Speaker 1: like Iraq and Gaza, and he is also the author
[1:57] Speaker 1: of some spy novels. One of them is Committed, which
[2:00] Speaker 1: that's the title of the book, Committed. It's out in
[2:03] Speaker 1: the United States and the UK right now. And he
[2:05] Speaker 1: has a new book coming out just in a couple
[2:08] Speaker 1: of weeks called Octagon. That'll be out in the UK
[2:11] Speaker 1: and hopefully we'll see it hit American shores sometime thereafter,
[2:16] Speaker 1: but you'll be able to find it on the UK
[2:17] Speaker 1: Amazon website regardless of where you're at. So, Chris, thank you.
[2:22] Speaker 1: Welcome to the show Man.
[2:24] Speaker 2: Thanks very much, Chack. Pleasure to be here.
[2:28] Speaker 1: So I like to start with at the beginning with
[2:31] Speaker 1: our guests, tell us a little bit about your upbringing.
[2:35] Speaker 1: And how it kind of took you towards governmental service.
[2:39] Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, well, I grew up in a kind of
[2:44] Speaker 2: small town not too far from London, and for fairly
[2:48] Speaker 2: ordinary upbringing, I would say, not particularly wealthy, not particularly poor.
[2:54] Speaker 2: But one significant thing was that my parents were both
[2:57] Speaker 2: languages teachers. There were always foreign languages being spoken in
[3:02] Speaker 2: the house, and especially when we went on holiday to
[3:05] Speaker 2: places like France and Spain, and I would see my
[3:09] Speaker 2: parents talking to people in their own language and just
[3:13] Speaker 2: kind of seeing the effect that had and their ability
[3:15] Speaker 2: to kind of make friends and make things happen abroad.
[3:20] Speaker 2: It was pretty inspiring. So I was always interested in,
[3:23] Speaker 2: i would say, travel languages. And then it kind of
[3:27] Speaker 2: it kind of took off really when I was at
[3:32] Speaker 2: university and I was studying geography, so I hadn't gone
[3:37] Speaker 2: down the languages that way, but I was very interested
[3:42] Speaker 2: in kind of anything to do with how people were
[3:47] Speaker 2: living in foreign countries, different cultures. And of course, one
[3:51] Speaker 2: of the biggest global events that happened while I was
[3:55] Speaker 2: at university was nine to eleven, and so that got
[3:59] Speaker 2: me very of interested in, i would say, in international
[4:02] Speaker 2: security issues. I studied a little bit of some of
[4:07] Speaker 2: those issues around globalization, migration down into kind of quite
[4:12] Speaker 2: quite specific stuff like kind of transnational terrorist networks, terrorist financing,
[4:18] Speaker 2: things like that. I was able to actually study that university,
[4:23] Speaker 2: and from there it kind of took me. Someone suggested
[4:26] Speaker 2: to me that maybe I should apply to the Foreign
[4:28] Speaker 2: Office because then I could actually work on some of
[4:31] Speaker 2: these some of these issues. And I had a very
[4:35] Speaker 2: formative experience whilst at university when I I was doing
[4:39] Speaker 2: some research in Ghana in West Africa, and I just
[4:44] Speaker 2: kind of pitched up there, not knowing anybody, just with
[4:49] Speaker 2: with with an idea of that I was going to
[4:51] Speaker 2: study something to do with kind of the way that
[4:55] Speaker 2: people the way that people were using or exploiting in
[4:58] Speaker 2: the case maybe rainforest recent and I found myself literally
[5:02] Speaker 2: in the middle of the rainforest in Ghana with no
[5:06] Speaker 2: support network, and all of a sudden, I was just
[5:08] Speaker 2: kind of in at the deep end and needed to
[5:11] Speaker 2: just kind of find my way through, make some contacts,
[5:16] Speaker 2: learn about how this place worked. It's very very different culture,
[5:19] Speaker 2: and I think that kind of stood me in quite
[5:21] Speaker 2: good stead for them doing that kind of thing for
[5:25] Speaker 2: a living, but also just really inspired me to want
[5:28] Speaker 2: to work overseas, work with different cultures, learn other languages,
[5:33] Speaker 2: and just kind of really go deep into the politics
[5:39] Speaker 2: of the geopolitics, you know, of how places worked and
[5:43] Speaker 2: how they fitted in in the international context. And then
[5:47] Speaker 2: with that nine to eleven influence, it kind of particularly
[5:49] Speaker 2: went down a security route.
[5:53] Speaker 1: And well, which languages did you learn where you were
[5:56] Speaker 1: in college and high school?
[5:58] Speaker 3: I suppose, yeah, well, I'd always been speaking some French
[6:05] Speaker 3: home in particular, my mum was really a French specialist,
[6:09] Speaker 3: my dad more of a Spanish specialist, and French was
[6:12] Speaker 3: the one that I kind of I kind of went for, and.
[6:18] Speaker 2: So that was always kind of kind of there. And
[6:20] Speaker 2: once I joined the Foreign Office, I was able to
[6:22] Speaker 2: actually take more classes and really build that up. And
[6:28] Speaker 2: again following that interest in the kind of geopolitics of
[6:31] Speaker 2: the Middle East, I was able to use the Languages
[6:35] Speaker 2: center at university to start with make a start with Arabic.
[6:39] Speaker 2: And I just remember actually this very kind of very
[6:43] Speaker 2: impactful moment where it was actually an American diplomat who
[6:47] Speaker 2: was appearing on Al Jazeera and he was just speaking,
[6:50] Speaker 2: you know, it's just a middle aged white American diplomat and
[6:54] Speaker 2: he was just speaking fluent Arabic, and I remember just
[6:57] Speaker 2: being blown away by it because it's such a different
[6:59] Speaker 2: language to the kind of European languages that we would hear,
[7:03] Speaker 2: you know, just kind of going on holiday places like France, Spain,
[7:06] Speaker 2: Italy wherever. And I just thought, especially with everything that
[7:11] Speaker 2: was going on in the world at the time, I thought,
[7:13] Speaker 2: this is a language that's gonna that that really inspires me,
[7:16] Speaker 2: and I'm gonna I'm gonna get stuck into this and
[7:19] Speaker 2: try and learn it. So I did that. I did
[7:20] Speaker 2: it for end up doing it for about eight years
[7:22] Speaker 2: or so in the end.
[7:26] Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll circle back around on that. But I
[7:30] Speaker 1: when you applied to the Foreign Office after you graduate
[7:32] Speaker 1: from university, I mean, what's sort of the admission process, Like, yeah.
[7:39] Speaker 2: So you you let me see if I can I
[7:42] Speaker 2: can remember now, So it was you you fill out
[7:45] Speaker 2: the application form, you send that in and and then
[7:51] Speaker 2: and then if that's if they kind of like the
[7:53] Speaker 2: look of of you, you're you're you're coming, you know,
[7:58] Speaker 2: for for an interview, and if you get through that stage,
[8:04] Speaker 2: there's something called an assessment center where they basically chuck
[8:07] Speaker 2: you into a variety of situations that are designed to
[8:10] Speaker 2: replicate the kind of work you do, So you might
[8:13] Speaker 2: have you might just get given a stack of stack
[8:16] Speaker 2: of paper, like literally a foot high, all about a
[8:20] Speaker 2: particular country, and you've got one hour to produce a
[8:24] Speaker 2: single sheet of paper briefing for somebody on that. So
[8:28] Speaker 2: you just have to smash through that information and distill
[8:31] Speaker 2: it down into a page. You've got roleplay exercises where
[8:35] Speaker 2: you have to everyone's got a different task you've got
[8:39] Speaker 2: or everyone has a different role. Excuse me, you're representing
[8:43] Speaker 2: a different part of government and you have incompatible aims.
[8:47] Speaker 2: So the idea is to negotiate, advocate for your position,
[8:52] Speaker 2: give a little ground, try and get a little from others.
[8:56] Speaker 2: And yeah, it's kind of interesting that I think in
[9:00] Speaker 2: that situation, they don't they don't want someone who comes
[9:03] Speaker 2: in and kind of dominates the situation. They want someone
[9:06] Speaker 2: who can kind of see different sides to it. You've
[9:11] Speaker 2: got you've got one to one role plays where you're
[9:14] Speaker 2: kind of you're engaging in in sort of like diplomatic situations.
[9:19] Speaker 2: And one of those I remembers, you know, the other
[9:22] Speaker 2: person is is clearly very pissed off about something, and
[9:26] Speaker 2: you have to just kind of placate them and modify
[9:29] Speaker 2: them in a in a professional way without giving away
[9:34] Speaker 2: too much of your own you know, your own position
[9:38] Speaker 2: and your own interests. And that's quite stressful because you're
[9:41] Speaker 2: not expecting it. Yeah, a whole bunch of things like that,
[9:44] Speaker 2: aptitude tests. It's it's a couple of days long, and
[9:48] Speaker 2: you're exhausted by by the end of it. So I
[9:51] Speaker 2: came through that, and then you have a final what
[9:53] Speaker 2: they call a final board, and that is just a
[9:56] Speaker 2: sort of open ended session where uh, you know, three
[10:00] Speaker 2: people will sit there in a line and just fire
[10:03] Speaker 2: questions at you. And I remember being asked about, you know,
[10:06] Speaker 2: my position on the on the Iraq War, my understanding
[10:10] Speaker 2: of other kind of geopolitical situations, ethical issues, all kinds
[10:14] Speaker 2: of stuff. They just want to probe and probe and
[10:16] Speaker 2: put you under pressure. See see see what your reaction
[10:21] Speaker 2: is to being under pressure, but just kind of ultimately
[10:24] Speaker 2: satisfy themselves at you're the sort of person who could
[10:26] Speaker 2: do this job and be put in front of uh,
[10:29] Speaker 2: you know, officials and other people overseas to represent the
[10:33] Speaker 2: UK without kind of getting into an enormous argument with
[10:40] Speaker 2: someone or saying something incredibly offensive.
[10:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, they're looking for people who can influence.
[10:50] Speaker 2: I think that's that that's a part of it. And
[10:52] Speaker 2: so for me, actually, interestingly this was kind of even
[10:55] Speaker 2: though I didn't necessarily understand appreciate it at the time,
[10:57] Speaker 2: this was the beginning of my influence in my interest
[11:02] Speaker 2: in psychology. And I'd started out I'd come into that
[11:07] Speaker 2: world very much from the perspective of geopolitics, security issues,
[11:12] Speaker 2: kind of big, big, sort of global scale international stuff
[11:16] Speaker 2: that was interesting to me, but I ended up increasingly
[11:19] Speaker 2: focusing down on, if you like, the individual psychology, the
[11:24] Speaker 2: way that individuals kind of think, feel, behave, and that
[11:28] Speaker 2: took me in another direction that kind of evolved out
[11:31] Speaker 2: of that work for the Foreign Office. So we can
[11:34] Speaker 2: talk about that more later perhaps, Yeah.
[11:36] Speaker 1: Sure. And so when you get there, after you finish,
[11:40] Speaker 1: I mean, where do you get assigned.
[11:44] Speaker 2: So most of the time, very occasionally people get will
[11:47] Speaker 2: get posted straight off a training course overseas, but most
[11:52] Speaker 2: people will go into a desk job in head office.
[11:55] Speaker 2: And that's really so you can kind of learn the
[12:00] Speaker 2: about how the organization works and just get a feel
[12:05] Speaker 2: for how policy functions, how policies, foreign policies is formulated,
[12:13] Speaker 2: how you gather information about the situation overseas, analyze it,
[12:17] Speaker 2: process it, and use it to try and try and
[12:19] Speaker 2: make decisions and present it to politicians who have to
[12:22] Speaker 2: make the big decisions about the way that the way
[12:26] Speaker 2: that your country engages overseas. So I was doing that.
[12:31] Speaker 2: What I actually found, funnily enough, was it was very
[12:34] Speaker 2: kind of it was kind of it was kind of dry.
[12:37] Speaker 2: I mean, I was working on sort of European Union
[12:42] Speaker 2: security issues, and there was some interesting elements to it,
[12:47] Speaker 2: but it was a lot of emails, There was a
[12:49] Speaker 2: lot of sitting at desks. There wasn't a lot of
[12:51] Speaker 2: getting out there and doing stuff. And part of me
[12:54] Speaker 2: actually thought at one point I was considering, do you know,
[12:59] Speaker 2: I'm twenty three, Do I need to just kind of
[13:02] Speaker 2: actually take some time out, go and do something that
[13:05] Speaker 2: is more kind of active and action based as it were.
[13:10] Speaker 2: Maybe maybe join the military, maybe join one of the
[13:13] Speaker 2: armed forces, do a few years there, because there are
[13:16] Speaker 2: a number of people who come into the Foreign service
[13:18] Speaker 2: having been in usually usually the military, sometimes other bronches
[13:23] Speaker 2: that armed forces, and they've kind of in a way
[13:27] Speaker 2: they've sort of got that out of their systems and
[13:28] Speaker 2: now then they're ready to do the slightly more kind
[13:31] Speaker 2: of let's say, like formal or analytical type of type
[13:35] Speaker 2: of work. They've been out there in the field, and
[13:38] Speaker 2: I kind of felt like I wanted to do that.
[13:40] Speaker 2: I was seriously thinking about it. But then one day,
[13:44] Speaker 2: after I'd been in for about eighteen I've been in
[13:47] Speaker 2: the service about eighteen months, I then got a call
[13:50] Speaker 2: from our HR department basically saying there was there was
[13:55] Speaker 2: a job in Iraq. I mean they were trying, they
[13:57] Speaker 2: were trying to sell it to me, but the bottom
[13:59] Speaker 2: line was no one wanted to do it. There was
[14:01] Speaker 2: no one else available to do it. They've pretty much
[14:04] Speaker 2: gone through everyone who who was willing to go to
[14:07] Speaker 2: a raquet had been there and done too. Because the
[14:10] Speaker 2: tours there are are typically a year, sometimes six months,
[14:15] Speaker 2: but typically a year, and that's quite It takes quite
[14:18] Speaker 2: a toll on people, especially the older diplomats who you know,
[14:22] Speaker 2: would have had families and it's more disruptive for them.
[14:27] Speaker 2: But basically it came to me and I was by
[14:29] Speaker 2: this point it's twenty four and I just kind of
[14:33] Speaker 2: just jumped, jumped at the chance, basically. So it was
[14:36] Speaker 2: a posting in Basra and that kind of took me
[14:38] Speaker 2: on to the next stage.
[14:41] Speaker 1: Yeah, what year was that that you got to Bastra?
[14:45] Speaker 2: Two thousand and five?
[14:46] Speaker 1: Okay, things are heating up, Yeah.
[14:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So basically you had the invasion in
[14:52] Speaker 2: two thousand and three, Saddam had been deposed. There was
[14:56] Speaker 2: this kind of honeymoon period, especially in the south where
[15:00] Speaker 2: Saddam had not been popular predominantly Shia Muslim parts of
[15:05] Speaker 2: southern Iraq, and initially the British in the south were
[15:13] Speaker 2: were you know, met with warmth and approval from a
[15:17] Speaker 2: lot of Iraqis for getting rid of Saddam. But by
[15:19] Speaker 2: two thousand and five, the Iraqi, a lot of Iraqis
[15:22] Speaker 2: were thinking, why are you still here? Are you trying
[15:24] Speaker 2: to steal our oil? What's going on? Are you trying
[15:28] Speaker 2: to control our government? You know? And and an insurgency started,
[15:33] Speaker 2: supported by Iran, which was you know, as I'm sure,
[15:37] Speaker 2: as I'm sure you got pretty violent pretty quickly.
[15:42] Speaker 1: You know, not to reenact your board when you applied
[15:45] Speaker 1: for the Foreign Office. But I'm going to shoot this
[15:47] Speaker 1: one to you. Do you want to tell us a
[15:49] Speaker 1: little bit about the British presence in Basra? If I
[15:52] Speaker 1: recall correctly, like all the way back to the maybe
[15:55] Speaker 1: eighteen hundred's, the Brits had a railroad from Basra all
[15:59] Speaker 1: the way up into Turkey, I believe.
[16:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I mean Iraq had had a lot
[16:05] Speaker 2: of you know, historical well there was a big historical
[16:09] Speaker 2: British presence in Iraq, and yeah, it's sort of it
[16:16] Speaker 2: kind of really went up a notch. I mean, you
[16:20] Speaker 2: had the kind of you know, British British support to
[16:27] Speaker 2: a lot of indigenous groups in that area during the
[16:30] Speaker 2: First World War, when you had you know, Lawrence of Arabia,
[16:34] Speaker 2: and that was kind of supporting in a sense, kind
[16:38] Speaker 2: of supporting Arab autonomy in that region. But when those
[16:41] Speaker 2: places it sort of broke away from the Islamic Empire
[16:46] Speaker 2: and broke away from Turkish control, the Brits and the
[16:51] Speaker 2: French and others essentially just installed their favorite people who'd
[16:56] Speaker 2: cooperated with them, you know, over the pre his decades.
[17:01] Speaker 2: And that was the case in in Iraq and then
[17:05] Speaker 2: of course later in it So so at that time
[17:08] Speaker 2: that was pretty kind of pro British, but then was
[17:13] Speaker 2: ultimately that moment was overthrown by by the Bath Party
[17:18] Speaker 2: and then Eventually Sadam Hussein took control of the Bath
[17:21] Speaker 2: Party and with it, you know, it was a kind
[17:25] Speaker 2: of with the context of the sort of Bath Party
[17:29] Speaker 2: being Arab socialism and therefore more allied to the USSR
[17:35] Speaker 2: at the time, Soviet Union kind of became the enemies
[17:39] Speaker 2: of of the UK, and you know, the British were
[17:44] Speaker 2: viewed with extreme suspicion there, similarly to in Iran, where
[17:49] Speaker 2: we'd we'd, we'd we'd been great supporters of of the
[17:53] Speaker 2: Shah who've been overthrown in the Islamic Revolution and and
[17:59] Speaker 2: and the British was sort of always there in the background,
[18:02] Speaker 2: kind of interfering, pulling strings, the kind of malevolent poppet masters.
[18:08] Speaker 2: So there's a good degree of hostility, it's fair to say,
[18:15] Speaker 2: and historical complexity.
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[21:31] Speaker 1: Bye. And so by the time you get there in
[21:35] Speaker 1: two thousand and five, I mean, this was an American
[21:38] Speaker 1: led war, but there's this British presence in Bospra even
[21:41] Speaker 1: done and through the two thousands.
[21:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yes, So the British. The British were in
[21:48] Speaker 2: charge of what was known as MND Southeast, that was
[21:52] Speaker 2: the four Southern provinces of Iraq, Basra being the biggest,
[21:58] Speaker 2: but also Missana, dic Art and Maysan province that borders
[22:03] Speaker 2: Iran on the east, the east side of southern Iraq,
[22:07] Speaker 2: and there was a bit of support there from some
[22:08] Speaker 2: other countries. To the Italians were were there, the Japanese
[22:13] Speaker 2: were there in a limited capacity, to the Australians, and
[22:17] Speaker 2: the American presence was was obviously focused more around the
[22:21] Speaker 2: kind of center and the west of of Iraq, and
[22:27] Speaker 2: you know, the things were kind of much smaller scale
[22:31] Speaker 2: in in in the south of Iraq. I remember going
[22:34] Speaker 2: up to Baghdad and visiting the green zone there and
[22:37] Speaker 2: the size of it was mind boggling, Uh, the amount
[22:42] Speaker 2: of activity there and the number of people it was huge,
[22:46] Speaker 2: whereas down in the south it was there wasn't really
[22:49] Speaker 2: a green zone. There was basically just a base. There
[22:53] Speaker 2: were several bases that the British were were running in
[22:57] Speaker 2: Basra in the province of Basri, in the city and
[23:00] Speaker 2: surrounding area, but the main one one where I was
[23:03] Speaker 2: based was Basra Palace, which was in the city of Basra.
[23:09] Speaker 2: So you know, we were right there in the action
[23:12] Speaker 2: and when I got there, we were still traveling by
[23:17] Speaker 2: road in kind of you know, convoys of armored vehicles
[23:20] Speaker 2: with close protection and countermeasures and so on. But pretty
[23:25] Speaker 2: soon that the ied threat got to be so big
[23:28] Speaker 2: from from roadside bombs that were getting increasingly sophisticated with
[23:33] Speaker 2: Iranian support to the local militias, that we ended up
[23:36] Speaker 2: just only moving by air or occasionally by by boat
[23:39] Speaker 2: on the river. So the situation deteriorated pretty quickly.
[23:45] Speaker 1: What was your job when you got there, Well, I.
[23:50] Speaker 2: Was at a junior diplomatic role. So really, if you're
[23:55] Speaker 2: a diplomat, you've got to do two things. You've got
[23:57] Speaker 2: to kind of in a sense, gather information about what's
[24:00] Speaker 2: going on in the place where you are. That goes
[24:03] Speaker 2: back to the team in London who are responsible for
[24:06] Speaker 2: that region of the world the UK policy in that
[24:08] Speaker 2: region of the world, and the information you sent to
[24:11] Speaker 2: them from the ground informs the policy, so you're kind
[24:14] Speaker 2: of an on the ground expert. The other thing you
[24:18] Speaker 2: do is you represent the UK at any kind of
[24:21] Speaker 2: event that requires an official presence, so you know, if
[24:24] Speaker 2: you're in if you're in a nice kind of European
[24:26] Speaker 2: capital or somewhere where there isn't a war going on.
[24:29] Speaker 2: You're going up to diplomatic events and other sort of
[24:34] Speaker 2: official duties like that, get maybe giving speeches at particular
[24:39] Speaker 2: organizations that have a connection to your country, whatever it
[24:43] Speaker 2: might be. In Iraq, there's nothing like that basically, So
[24:47] Speaker 2: we just tried to get out as much as we can,
[24:50] Speaker 2: you know, as much as we could to understand what
[24:52] Speaker 2: was going on on the ground. And really there were
[24:56] Speaker 2: two main ways of doing that, I think, you know.
[24:59] Speaker 2: We used to sort of speculate in a kind of
[25:02] Speaker 2: very gallows humor dark sort of way, how long you
[25:05] Speaker 2: might survive if you just walked or drove out of
[25:08] Speaker 2: the front gate of the of the palace compound. And
[25:13] Speaker 2: the estimates always were never more than a few minutes,
[25:17] Speaker 2: because the local militias would have people watching the gates.
[25:21] Speaker 2: They would send their young recruits out with a pistol
[25:24] Speaker 2: and a scooter, and basically the orders were just attack it, anyone,
[25:28] Speaker 2: Just fire at anyone who comes out, who drives out
[25:30] Speaker 2: of there. So we couldn't we couldn't do it that way,
[25:35] Speaker 2: but we could go to other parts of southern Iraq
[25:37] Speaker 2: where the security wasn't quite as extreme, that the threat
[25:41] Speaker 2: wasn't as high. It wasn't like we were going around
[25:45] Speaker 2: on the ground, but we would invite people who were responsible,
[25:51] Speaker 2: you know, so it might be tribal leaders, it might
[25:52] Speaker 2: be local politicians, whoever it might be, to come into
[25:58] Speaker 2: the military bases and speak to us, and then we
[26:01] Speaker 2: would kind of really just initiate a dialogue with them
[26:04] Speaker 2: about what was going on and try and get some
[26:07] Speaker 2: ground truth about about what was happening in detail, especially
[26:11] Speaker 2: about the kind of security situation and about the political
[26:15] Speaker 2: situation and the build up to the first ever democratic
[26:17] Speaker 2: elections that they had in Iraq in two thousand and six.
[26:22] Speaker 2: And the other thing we would do is we would
[26:25] Speaker 2: contact by telephone people who we kind of trusted on
[26:27] Speaker 2: the ground. That was particularly in Bagrau where it's too
[26:31] Speaker 2: dangerous for us to go out and just get information
[26:34] Speaker 2: from them. And it might be as simple as, you know,
[26:37] Speaker 2: what's the price of a loaf of bread, what's the
[26:39] Speaker 2: price of you know, a gall and of petrol, these
[26:41] Speaker 2: kinds of things that are affecting people's everyday lives through
[26:45] Speaker 2: to you know, what are some of the what are
[26:48] Speaker 2: the militias. There was a very big issue where the
[26:52] Speaker 2: militias were taking control of the police so, you know,
[26:55] Speaker 2: the the coalition forces at that time were trying to
[26:58] Speaker 2: reform the police forces and the military and get rid of,
[27:04] Speaker 2: as it were, the old Saddam loyalists. But in their
[27:07] Speaker 2: place came a lot of people who were loyal to
[27:10] Speaker 2: some of these particularly the Iranian backed militias, and that
[27:14] Speaker 2: presented its own very significant security challenges where some of
[27:18] Speaker 2: these guys were using police and military units like their
[27:21] Speaker 2: own private armies, trying to understand all those dynamics.
[27:25] Speaker 1: Really, were you ever able to untangle that security situation
[27:30] Speaker 1: in Basra, you know, as far as like the force
[27:33] Speaker 1: protection aspect of.
[27:34] Speaker 2: It, well, it was of course, yeah, that was one
[27:40] Speaker 2: of the things that was, you know, uppermost in our
[27:44] Speaker 2: mind was that if we can really understand these situations,
[27:46] Speaker 2: we're going to contribute to protecting UK personnel, US personnel.
[27:51] Speaker 2: Of course, they're Americans in Basra as well, you know,
[27:55] Speaker 2: and and of course these new Iraqi recruits that were
[27:59] Speaker 2: trying to build up into the the new security forces there.
[28:05] Speaker 2: But it was really kind of shifting sands. It was
[28:07] Speaker 2: very difficult to get good intelligence, if you like, about
[28:11] Speaker 2: what was what was going on there, and there was
[28:15] Speaker 2: always this kind of murky picture. There was always a
[28:18] Speaker 2: degree of Iranian influence. We were never sure if we
[28:21] Speaker 2: were overestimating that or underestimating it. There'd be attacks, there
[28:26] Speaker 2: would be i DS. You know, we never really got
[28:30] Speaker 2: on top of it, and sometimes the attacks were extremely significant.
[28:34] Speaker 2: I can remember one day traveling in a in a helicopter.
[28:38] Speaker 2: I was actually traveling from Basra to kuwaita military helicopter.
[28:42] Speaker 2: We arrived and I took out my phone, it's one
[28:45] Speaker 2: of those old Nokia type type phones, and switched it,
[28:48] Speaker 2: switched it on again after the flight, and I had
[28:51] Speaker 2: a texture of my mum saying are you okay, and basically,
[28:55] Speaker 2: unbeknownst to me, while we're in the air, a helicopter
[28:58] Speaker 2: taken off from Basra and being shot down by a
[29:01] Speaker 2: surface to a missile over the city. Everyone on board
[29:04] Speaker 2: died and you know, British military helicopter and you know,
[29:10] Speaker 2: that was a capability that I don't think we even
[29:12] Speaker 2: realized those insurgents had at the time. So yeah, I
[29:17] Speaker 2: hate to say we never we never got on top
[29:19] Speaker 2: of it, and in fact we were. It wasn't just
[29:21] Speaker 2: that we were trying to counter the Iranian influence with
[29:25] Speaker 2: increasingly kind of sophisticated weaponry that was being supplied and
[29:28] Speaker 2: increasing domestic capability to manufacture, especially those shape charge i
[29:34] Speaker 2: eds that were really lethal against armored vehicles roadside bombs.
[29:42] Speaker 2: So it wasn't just it wasn't just that that that element.
[29:48] Speaker 2: It was also that, you know, we we just kind
[29:52] Speaker 2: of were trying to counter various conspiracy theories that, like
[29:56] Speaker 2: you alluded to earlier, will go back, you know, more
[29:59] Speaker 2: than a hundred years about British interference, and one of
[30:01] Speaker 2: the craziest of all that you might have heard was
[30:04] Speaker 2: that at one point while we were there, there was
[30:07] Speaker 2: an outbreak of some kind of animal virus linked to badgers,
[30:14] Speaker 2: and basically the the story took hold in Bosra that
[30:19] Speaker 2: the British were dropping infected badgers out of aircraft in
[30:26] Speaker 2: order to you know, attack the local population. It sounds
[30:30] Speaker 2: absolutely crazy, but people genuinely believe this. So so you're
[30:34] Speaker 2: trying to counter I mean, it's kind of a losing
[30:37] Speaker 2: battle in a way. Yeah.
[30:39] Speaker 1: Well, they used to say when when I was over
[30:42] Speaker 1: there with Special Forces in range of Battalion, the kind
[30:48] Speaker 1: of rumor was that we weren't really Americans, that were
[30:51] Speaker 1: Israeli commandos. Yeah, and then news broke this week that
[30:57] Speaker 1: allegedly the Israelis set up a secret you know, some
[31:00] Speaker 1: sort of refueling resupplied depot in the deserts of Iraq
[31:05] Speaker 1: outside Najaffe, and it's like, oh my god, this is
[31:07] Speaker 1: like every conspiracy theory they believed come to life.
[31:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's often, I mean, there's often a drop
[31:15] Speaker 2: of truth.
[31:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly these theories.
[31:17] Speaker 2: But but yeah, it's it's it's pretty crazy. But yeah,
[31:22] Speaker 2: what was really interesting to see, obviously, was the kind
[31:24] Speaker 2: of the interaction that we had with our military counterparts.
[31:30] Speaker 2: And we had, you know, both in terms of being
[31:32] Speaker 2: based right there with the British Army in the same
[31:35] Speaker 2: compound and attending their meetings and speaking to them every day,
[31:40] Speaker 2: forming good relationships with them, and seeing the challenges they've
[31:44] Speaker 2: they faced, right from the sort of top command level
[31:46] Speaker 2: of general you know, down to the sort of the
[31:49] Speaker 2: private soldiers, teenage guys who are just being sent out
[31:52] Speaker 2: on the streets to patrol. But then also the more
[31:57] Speaker 2: kind of specialist people who who were there too, as
[32:00] Speaker 2: you alluded to yourself, you know, with the kind of
[32:04] Speaker 2: special forces we also had the in our in our
[32:09] Speaker 2: close protection units. We had a lot of form of
[32:13] Speaker 2: Special Forces guys, and it's interesting to hear about some
[32:16] Speaker 2: of their you know experiences, and and yeah, they were
[32:23] Speaker 2: basically in charge of keeping us alive and anytime we
[32:25] Speaker 2: went anywhere.
[32:26] Speaker 1: I was going to say, this is like a particularly uh,
[32:30] Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like an oxymoron, but a particularly
[32:33] Speaker 1: aggressive form of diplomacy that you're out there in a
[32:36] Speaker 1: war zone trying to conduct diplomacy before the war is over.
[32:40] Speaker 1: Really and what was that like for you? And what
[32:44] Speaker 1: was it like, you know, interfacing as a diplomat with
[32:47] Speaker 1: the British military or other militaries.
[32:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I mean it in some ways, like
[32:56] Speaker 2: it's always very frustrating because there was you know, there
[33:02] Speaker 2: are obviously a lot of things we wanted to do.
[33:04] Speaker 2: There are a lot of things the army wanted to
[33:05] Speaker 2: do that would just not possible because you're kind of
[33:07] Speaker 2: firefighting with the security situation there. But also you know,
[33:13] Speaker 2: fascinating to see how such a big deployment was managed.
[33:18] Speaker 2: You know, I think we had at some point we
[33:20] Speaker 2: had about eight thousand British troops in southern Iraq. I mean,
[33:24] Speaker 2: nothing really compared to the American presence, but significant very
[33:27] Speaker 2: significant for a UK overseas operation, and just the way
[33:33] Speaker 2: that the Army was able to mobilize logistically, and not
[33:39] Speaker 2: just the UK, but you know, when we would go
[33:43] Speaker 2: to places where we'd actually end up being kind of
[33:46] Speaker 2: supported by U by U S troops as well to
[33:49] Speaker 2: be able to go out and do what we needed
[33:51] Speaker 2: to do. The ability of the Army to just kind
[33:56] Speaker 2: of get stuff done is really impressive and I I
[34:00] Speaker 2: developed a huge respect for not only the way that
[34:04] Speaker 2: the way that it works and extremely difficult circumstances, but
[34:08] Speaker 2: also just the kind of resolve of individuals who had
[34:11] Speaker 2: to put themselves in harm's way every day. As a diplomat,
[34:15] Speaker 2: you're just essentially wrapped in cotton wool and you're told,
[34:17] Speaker 2: you know, if anything kicks off, just get on the
[34:21] Speaker 2: deck and you know, don't move. And you know, as
[34:25] Speaker 2: a last result, maybe if everybody else has been shot dead,
[34:29] Speaker 2: maybe here's a pistol that you might be able to,
[34:32] Speaker 2: you know, use if you're not too much of them
[34:34] Speaker 2: up at to protect yourself. But absolutely is.
[34:37] Speaker 1: The last use it to shoot yourself at that point, Yeah, yeah,
[34:43] Speaker 1: probably the best option. Hey guys, this is Jack Murphy.
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[36:07] Speaker 1: Slash House, thanks for supporting the show. Everyone. How did
[36:13] Speaker 1: things evolve in Bostra from the time you got there
[36:16] Speaker 1: to the time you left? What was the situation sort
[36:19] Speaker 1: of like as your tour was winding down?
[36:23] Speaker 2: Yes, I think it there was, Well, there was an
[36:28] Speaker 2: Iraqi government in place by the time I by the
[36:32] Speaker 2: time I left, which was very much a kind of
[36:35] Speaker 2: sheer dominated government because the Sunny said boycotted the elections
[36:41] Speaker 2: in large part. And I think what we were finding,
[36:47] Speaker 2: what we're finding then was that that the the security
[36:51] Speaker 2: situation was obviously pretty bad. Still. We were on the
[36:56] Speaker 2: fire every single day in our compound, rockets and waters,
[37:01] Speaker 2: some of them you know, old munitions that were woefully
[37:05] Speaker 2: inaccurate and would miss the base by like a kilometer,
[37:09] Speaker 2: and others that would land on the building next to
[37:11] Speaker 2: you and in the middle of the night when you're sleeping,
[37:16] Speaker 2: and you know that there were definitely casualties of of
[37:20] Speaker 2: of those incidents too. I remember one one night actually
[37:25] Speaker 2: just hearing gunfire and uh, there was so much of it. Uh,
[37:31] Speaker 2: some of the military guys were actually had actually gone
[37:35] Speaker 2: up onto the roofs of the buildings to see to
[37:36] Speaker 2: see what was going on, and literally the sky was
[37:39] Speaker 2: just kind of lit up with trace arounds going in
[37:42] Speaker 2: all directions, I mean, like constant gunfire. And we thought,
[37:45] Speaker 2: this is like end of days. You know, we're going
[37:48] Speaker 2: to have to They're going to have to like airlift
[37:51] Speaker 2: everyone all of us out here, get us, get us
[37:54] Speaker 2: to Q eight or somewhere. But then and then we
[37:57] Speaker 2: kind of we we messaged some of our contacts in
[37:59] Speaker 2: the city interest said you know, what was going on,
[38:01] Speaker 2: and they came back pretty quickly and said, actually, Iraq
[38:05] Speaker 2: just beat Syria at football. But yeah, we thought, literally
[38:12] Speaker 2: it was this was the final, the final battle basically,
[38:16] Speaker 2: so the security situation got got progressively worse, and then
[38:22] Speaker 2: and then I think it was it was only and
[38:25] Speaker 2: you know, there was some intelligence led operations to detain
[38:28] Speaker 2: some of the key figures in that insurgency. But but ultimately,
[38:35] Speaker 2: as I say, it was, it was like firefighting and
[38:38] Speaker 2: really the only thing that was going to stop it
[38:40] Speaker 2: was was leaving, which is what we did ultimately a
[38:44] Speaker 2: few years later. But I remember, I remember finishing and
[38:47] Speaker 2: finishing that tour and thinking I'm not quite sure what
[38:53] Speaker 2: we achieved there. It was definitely worse when I left
[38:57] Speaker 2: than when I arrived.
[39:00] Speaker 1: Sad to say, you know, I think our listeners would
[39:04] Speaker 1: love it if I can ask you if you had
[39:08] Speaker 1: any interaction with the SAS guys.
[39:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I did. I mean, I mean, for starters,
[39:19] Speaker 2: there was a you know that there was a private
[39:22] Speaker 2: security company which was responsible for all the all the
[39:27] Speaker 2: diplomats security called Control Risk Group and had a number
[39:32] Speaker 2: of former SAYS personnel serving there who would kind of
[39:36] Speaker 2: see on it on a daily basis, and you know,
[39:39] Speaker 2: we'd go there. There was there was a lot of
[39:43] Speaker 2: downtime in Iraq as well, you know, especially as a
[39:48] Speaker 2: as A, as A, as a civilian, even actually the
[39:52] Speaker 2: military guys who were kind of actively deploying on the
[39:55] Speaker 2: streets every day, they would have a lot of downtime.
[39:58] Speaker 2: So with our downtime, often we'd with the close protection
[40:00] Speaker 2: we go down to the to the ranges. We we
[40:04] Speaker 2: we do some firearms drills, we do some driving driving
[40:07] Speaker 2: drills in the armored vehicles. There was some there was
[40:10] Speaker 2: definitely some fun stuff there too. We'd mess around with
[40:12] Speaker 2: some of the kit that we had night vision things
[40:14] Speaker 2: like that, just ultimately with the purpose of being kind
[40:18] Speaker 2: of familiar with it. But along the way, you know,
[40:22] Speaker 2: you're seeing some of these guys in action, and it's
[40:26] Speaker 2: really impressive. I mean, the professionalism, the speed, and the
[40:30] Speaker 2: accuracy with their with their weapons drills. And I've done
[40:35] Speaker 2: a little bit I'd spent I spent a little bit
[40:37] Speaker 2: of time at Hereford actually previously, which was a kind
[40:41] Speaker 2: of a kind of a short training course that was
[40:45] Speaker 2: designed at sort of helping you be in a in
[40:49] Speaker 2: a conflict environment and being a military environment and uh
[40:53] Speaker 2: and and that was run by the guys from from Hereford,
[40:57] Speaker 2: So yeah, there was there was of contact there and
[41:03] Speaker 2: various drills. One that I remember was we were it
[41:11] Speaker 2: was it was a situational awareness drill, and the idea
[41:15] Speaker 2: was you kind of drive around this this course and uh,
[41:20] Speaker 2: various things happen that you have to to react to.
[41:25] Speaker 2: And I won't give any any spoilers about that, but essentially,
[41:29] Speaker 2: the situations ramp up to the point where you cannot
[41:33] Speaker 2: escape and a bunch of guys are basically attacking you
[41:35] Speaker 2: in your car. Uh, and they've got weapons and they're
[41:39] Speaker 2: pointing them at you and they're smashing the windows of
[41:41] Speaker 2: the car and they're wearing Vallet claveras and you kind of, uh,
[41:47] Speaker 2: you know, you're sort of like frozen with fear basically,
[41:50] Speaker 2: And I remember getting I remember getting dragged dragged out
[41:54] Speaker 2: of the dragged out the window, and the guy who
[41:57] Speaker 2: I was doing this with, uh, who was also from
[42:02] Speaker 2: the Foreign Office or you know, also kind of diplomat
[42:05] Speaker 2: who was going to be going off somewhere on the
[42:07] Speaker 2: more dangerous side, he decided for some unknown reason to
[42:11] Speaker 2: try fighting back and.
[42:15] Speaker 1: How that worked out not too well.
[42:20] Speaker 2: He basically so he had an AK forty seven pointing
[42:25] Speaker 2: in his face, and he decides to grab the barrel
[42:29] Speaker 2: of it with both hands, and I think the Herefords
[42:32] Speaker 2: operator who was holding this weapon was so kind of
[42:35] Speaker 2: shocked by that he sort of it almost took him
[42:38] Speaker 2: a moment to process why this diplomat was attempting to
[42:43] Speaker 2: to take the weapon off him, and his response, in
[42:47] Speaker 2: the end was to essentially swing it round and just
[42:50] Speaker 2: crack this diplomat in the head with the butt of
[42:54] Speaker 2: the the AK, leading to quite quite a large kind
[42:58] Speaker 2: of wound on the guy's face that needed some medical
[43:02] Speaker 2: treatment later. And then what they did is they They
[43:05] Speaker 2: they picked him up, They popped the they popped the
[43:07] Speaker 2: trunk of the of the car, the boot, They slung
[43:10] Speaker 2: him in the back. They told me to get in
[43:11] Speaker 2: the front. I was shaking so much I couldn't drive.
[43:15] Speaker 2: They had to reach in and kind of start the
[43:17] Speaker 2: car for me. Anyway, we drove off and this other
[43:21] Speaker 2: diplomat had he actually had uh a false eye. He'd
[43:29] Speaker 2: he'd lost an eye earlier in his life. So we
[43:31] Speaker 2: got to the end of the because the end of
[43:33] Speaker 2: this course, and there's a medic there who's who's ready
[43:36] Speaker 2: to check everyone over. And by this point he's recovered
[43:39] Speaker 2: his composure. So he gets out of the car, kind
[43:42] Speaker 2: of holding his eye, and he staggers over to the
[43:44] Speaker 2: medic and he just pops his eye out in front
[43:46] Speaker 2: of he pretty much has a heart attack, and he
[43:51] Speaker 2: realized exactly what was going on. So there was.
[43:57] Speaker 1: His glass eye.
[43:58] Speaker 2: That's great, Yeah, exactly, but yeah, very impressive seeing seeing that,
[44:03] Speaker 2: seeing those guys in action.
[44:06] Speaker 1: And I mean, these these sorts of scenarios, I mean
[44:09] Speaker 1: you can see why they put people like you through
[44:12] Speaker 1: them because of the kind of sketchy situation that you
[44:15] Speaker 1: find yourself in. I mean we had you know, our
[44:17] Speaker 1: ambassador to Libya killed about ten years ago. Unfortunately. I
[44:22] Speaker 1: know there there's that famous incident were they am I
[44:26] Speaker 1: five guys in Northern Ireland where they got there was
[44:29] Speaker 1: a general.
[44:32] Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, and there was also there was another kid.
[44:34] Speaker 2: There was a kidnapp incident in Libya too, which I
[44:38] Speaker 2: was involved at that At the London end, I was
[44:41] Speaker 2: involved in some of the negotiations for the release of
[44:44] Speaker 2: those guys. That was some uh some some special Forces
[44:50] Speaker 2: operators and uh and a guy from the Foreign Service
[44:55] Speaker 2: and that. Yeah, these these things can happen kind of
[44:57] Speaker 2: kind of all too easily. It's also of quiet and
[45:01] Speaker 2: then suddenly something like that can can happen. So any
[45:04] Speaker 2: any training, I guess you've had that might prepare you
[45:08] Speaker 2: for those kinds of situations, whether it's driving, whether it's
[45:11] Speaker 2: using a weapon, whether it's just being in captivity and
[45:16] Speaker 2: recognizing that you have no control over anything like that's
[45:20] Speaker 2: going to be helpful.
[45:23] Speaker 1: And where did you go after Bostra? What was sort
[45:26] Speaker 1: of the next stop for you?
[45:29] Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, pretty much I took some leave and I
[45:33] Speaker 2: and it didn't traveling in Africa just to kind of
[45:37] Speaker 2: decompress a bit and and then I and then I
[45:41] Speaker 2: got myself ready. I went into what we call the
[45:43] Speaker 2: pre posting phase, where you're getting it, you're getting everything ready,
[45:46] Speaker 2: you're getting your visas, your accommodation, reading in on the
[45:51] Speaker 2: subject matter and I and I went off to Jerusalem
[45:55] Speaker 2: after that. So in Jerusalem, I was responsible for the
[46:00] Speaker 2: way the UK divides the work is that basically the embassy,
[46:03] Speaker 2: British Embassy in Tel Aviv deals with with Israeli counterparts,
[46:08] Speaker 2: and the British consulate in Jerusalem deals predominantly with Palestinian contacts.
[46:14] Speaker 2: So I was working on that side, and that meant
[46:16] Speaker 2: I spent quite a lot of time in the West
[46:18] Speaker 2: Bank and in Gaza as well. So funnily enough, I
[46:22] Speaker 2: mean you think of Gaza has been a war zone
[46:25] Speaker 2: for the last couple of years. It was on and
[46:28] Speaker 2: off of war zone while I was there, But by
[46:31] Speaker 2: comparison to Iraq, it was like a really normal posting
[46:36] Speaker 2: where you could actually go out and meet people and
[46:38] Speaker 2: be a diplomat.
[46:40] Speaker 1: And again, for to look back at the history, what
[46:44] Speaker 1: was in the past called the entire area I guess
[46:48] Speaker 1: or most of it was called Palestine. That was a
[46:50] Speaker 1: British colony essentially.
[46:54] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, after the after the First World War, it
[46:58] Speaker 2: was a kind of you know British what they called
[47:01] Speaker 2: the British Mandate where the UK took over responsibility for
[47:07] Speaker 2: for for for that area of Palestine, and that kind
[47:12] Speaker 2: of went through essentially until the Second World War. But
[47:17] Speaker 2: the Britis were at that time facing their own insurgency
[47:20] Speaker 2: funnily enough, from ironically enough, from from Jewish groups at
[47:26] Speaker 2: the time like Hagana and Irgun who were were wanting
[47:31] Speaker 2: to establish themselves in that in that territory as well,
[47:34] Speaker 2: and had a very small presence at the time, but
[47:36] Speaker 2: but also used you know, armed kind of insurgent tactics. Uh.
[47:42] Speaker 2: And then after the Second World War, of course, when
[47:46] Speaker 2: the UN mandate set up UH, the Israel and the
[47:50] Speaker 2: Palestinian territories. But then with that succession of conflicts in
[47:55] Speaker 2: in you know, the the the forty eight war and
[48:01] Speaker 2: then sixty seven and then again seventy three, and gradually
[48:06] Speaker 2: the political map changed in Israel took territory and the
[48:11] Speaker 2: Palestinians ended up kind of kind of separated. I think
[48:14] Speaker 2: the the initial plan was was was pretty crazy to
[48:19] Speaker 2: think that would work out, but that was obviously some
[48:22] Speaker 2: of some of our forbears who who didn't really appreciate
[48:26] Speaker 2: the tensions on the on the ground, I think, and
[48:30] Speaker 2: and you ended up with these two quite distinct territories
[48:33] Speaker 2: of West Bank and Gaza that then kind of brought
[48:37] Speaker 2: their own security issues and and extremely high levels of
[48:42] Speaker 2: you know, Palestinian terrorism in the in the seventies and
[48:45] Speaker 2: the eighties and then through to yeah, what what we're
[48:51] Speaker 2: called the into Farda's, these sort of Palestinian kind of
[48:56] Speaker 2: kind of mass insurgencies if you like that, that involved
[49:01] Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of violent acts and terrorist
[49:04] Speaker 2: acts and in the early two thousands suicide bombings as
[49:08] Speaker 2: well by Hamas. And when I got to Jerusalem at
[49:14] Speaker 2: the beginning I first went out there at the end
[49:16] Speaker 2: of those six and really started the posting at the
[49:18] Speaker 2: beginning of two thousand and seven. The security situation was
[49:22] Speaker 2: actually fairly fairly calm there, and it flared up over
[49:26] Speaker 2: over the time that I was that I was there,
[49:29] Speaker 2: but it wasn't like active. It wasn't like in the
[49:33] Speaker 2: second and too far with suicide bombings in you know,
[49:38] Speaker 2: bus stations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem place and that
[49:41] Speaker 2: kind of thing. But there were there, there was an
[49:45] Speaker 2: ongoing kind of level of security security issues kind of bubbling.
[49:52] Speaker 1: Away, and I took it. It's what two thousand and
[49:58] Speaker 1: seven or eight by the time you get there, Yeah.
[50:02] Speaker 2: Early two thousand and seven started. That started that posting.
[50:08] Speaker 2: And the main issue then was that Hamas had won
[50:11] Speaker 2: the elections, so they've been democratically elected as the majority
[50:16] Speaker 2: party in the Palestinian parliament, but were then boycotted by Israel,
[50:23] Speaker 2: by the US, by the European Union, by most many
[50:29] Speaker 2: countries internationally. That made it a kind of almost impossible
[50:32] Speaker 2: for them to run the Palestinian government that's very dependent
[50:35] Speaker 2: on foreign aid. And then at some point while I
[50:39] Speaker 2: was there, kind of precipitated this essentially a kind of
[50:45] Speaker 2: small scale civil war where Fatah that was the kind
[50:48] Speaker 2: of yeah, the other side, if you like, the kind
[50:53] Speaker 2: of more secular, kind of socialist background, our Fat's old
[51:03] Speaker 2: party that had come into you know, with the with
[51:08] Speaker 2: the peace the Oslo Peace Accords in the nineties, come
[51:11] Speaker 2: into government, uh, and we were responsible for areas of
[51:15] Speaker 2: Palatinian territories, and we're doing business with these Raelis and
[51:19] Speaker 2: negotiating with them and so forth. They ended up fighting
[51:24] Speaker 2: Hamas you know, sometimes open battles on the streets with
[51:28] Speaker 2: their armed wings. Uh. And it's kind of split in
[51:34] Speaker 2: the end to Hamas controlling Gaza, which was the situation
[51:38] Speaker 2: that has continued until just very recently.
[51:42] Speaker 1: Uh.
[51:43] Speaker 2: And then Fatter or the Palestinian authority, but really with
[51:47] Speaker 2: fatter focused security forces running the West Bank around kind
[51:51] Speaker 2: of Romala, Nablus, he on those kinds of areas.
[51:56] Speaker 1: And when you arrived, what was sort of your job
[51:59] Speaker 1: and what was the British foreign policy position towards these
[52:02] Speaker 1: Palestinian territories.
[52:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was, well, so my job was it was
[52:11] Speaker 2: that same real general concept of kind of gathering information
[52:17] Speaker 2: from the place and also representing the UK. But the
[52:20] Speaker 2: difference with Iraq was that in Jerusalem I was actually
[52:23] Speaker 2: able to represent the UK. I could go along to
[52:27] Speaker 2: you know, meetings of international organizations whatever it might be
[52:31] Speaker 2: United Nations, diplomatic gatherings, European Union. I could meet Palestinian
[52:38] Speaker 2: politicians easily. I could go to their offices, we might
[52:41] Speaker 2: go to restaurants something like that, and there wasn't a
[52:46] Speaker 2: security threat in that sense, and I was able to
[52:48] Speaker 2: talk to people about about politics and trying to understand
[52:51] Speaker 2: what's going on there. I was still learning Arabic at
[52:55] Speaker 2: the time as well, so I was taking I was
[52:57] Speaker 2: taking Arabic classes in Jerusalem too and trying to put
[53:01] Speaker 2: that into practice every day as best I could. But
[53:06] Speaker 2: it was very it was pretty challenging because we our
[53:11] Speaker 2: policy was we supported a two state solution, which means
[53:16] Speaker 2: we felt that there should be a state of Israel
[53:19] Speaker 2: but also a Palestinian state, and that anything we could
[53:25] Speaker 2: do to support that outcome was was was in in
[53:30] Speaker 2: British interests and was we believed in wider interests for
[53:33] Speaker 2: the region regional stability. But we also had a policy
[53:37] Speaker 2: whereby we couldn't speak to Hamas. So one of my
[53:41] Speaker 2: jobs was to kind of find people who understood Hamas
[53:47] Speaker 2: as a movement, as you know, and really understand where
[53:52] Speaker 2: they were trying to understand where they were coming from,
[53:56] Speaker 2: but without being able to actually speak to them, which
[53:58] Speaker 2: was which was quite a challenge. Diploma as you can imagine.
[54:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's going to say, so you have to
[54:04] Speaker 1: find like people who have business with Hamas and try
[54:08] Speaker 1: to like work it that way because you're not able
[54:10] Speaker 1: to speak to them directly.
[54:13] Speaker 2: Exactly. So it may be that you have people who
[54:16] Speaker 2: are kind of you might have people who are operating
[54:18] Speaker 2: in the kind of academic space or charity space who
[54:23] Speaker 2: just have a good understanding of it, and so you're
[54:27] Speaker 2: getting information secondhand essentially, but you're operating within your own
[54:35] Speaker 2: government's rules essentially.
[54:38] Speaker 1: And I know the Brits have their own way of
[54:41] Speaker 1: conducting back channels, Like there's actually a position in Parliament
[54:46] Speaker 1: called the backbenchers, right.
[54:49] Speaker 2: The back bench.
[54:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, they're able to go and talk to people that
[54:53] Speaker 1: actual members of Parliament can't talk.
[54:54] Speaker 2: To, right well, Yeah, I think the general principle is
[55:00] Speaker 2: is basically the less the less senior you are, the
[55:04] Speaker 2: more you're able to to kind of conduct that that
[55:07] Speaker 2: type of business. If you're an if you're an ambassador,
[55:10] Speaker 2: you you're you're pretty much on show all the time,
[55:14] Speaker 2: twenty four to seven. Everything you say, anything you say
[55:16] Speaker 2: could end up in a newspaper. Even even you go
[55:19] Speaker 2: and have have your haircut, you know, you've got to
[55:21] Speaker 2: watch what you say to the barber or you've got
[55:23] Speaker 2: to be you're kind of on show basically, right right,
[55:26] Speaker 2: And you get grilled everywhere you go. Envy the ambassador,
[55:30] Speaker 2: envy at all who's constantly getting grilled every single thing
[55:34] Speaker 2: he did. But uh, but yeah, the I wouldn't you know,
[55:43] Speaker 2: I've got to be careful obviously what I what I
[55:46] Speaker 2: say in that that area with with back channels, but certainly,
[55:51] Speaker 2: certainly when there is a significant situation. I think what
[55:56] Speaker 2: Britain does very well is it finds people who can
[55:59] Speaker 2: mediate between between us and between the people we need
[56:04] Speaker 2: to speak to, whether that's a kidnapped situation or or
[56:08] Speaker 2: to do with other kinds of hostilities, whatever it might be.
[56:11] Speaker 2: And I remember there was one there was one situation
[56:13] Speaker 2: in Gaza where we traveled down there with the ambassador
[56:16] Speaker 2: because there was a BBC journalist called Alan Johnston who
[56:19] Speaker 2: had been kidnapped by not by Hamas, not by Palaestini
[56:24] Speaker 2: is Lamateur had or any other group, but actually by
[56:26] Speaker 2: a kind of by a criminal clan essentially a kind
[56:31] Speaker 2: of crime family in Gaza, and you know, he'd kind
[56:34] Speaker 2: of gone a little bit off the beaten track and
[56:37] Speaker 2: someone who kidnapped him, and we went down there to
[56:41] Speaker 2: kind of find people who could you know, advocate mediate
[56:45] Speaker 2: for his release. Unfortunately he was released in the end.
[56:49] Speaker 2: He actually wrote wrote a book about being in captivity
[56:52] Speaker 2: in Gaza that's called kidnapped, which is is a It's
[56:55] Speaker 2: a short book, very impactful, and I'd recommend that to
[56:58] Speaker 2: anyone who wanted to kind of go deeper into that
[57:01] Speaker 2: that story. But yeah, you always had the sense down
[57:06] Speaker 2: in Gaza that it was things were never far away
[57:11] Speaker 2: from from from kicking off. It's a very poor place.
[57:15] Speaker 2: People have kind of nothing to lose. There's a real
[57:18] Speaker 2: culture of martyrdom. You see these huge posters and murals
[57:22] Speaker 2: of people who've who've died one way or another fighting
[57:26] Speaker 2: these rallies or been put in prison. And these guys
[57:30] Speaker 2: are for the Israelis, for a lot of people, they're
[57:33] Speaker 2: they're terrorists in Gaza. Their heroes and their family their
[57:38] Speaker 2: families received received money and and status. And you can
[57:43] Speaker 2: see how that kind of you know, keeps going to
[57:45] Speaker 2: the next generation.
[57:48] Speaker 1: I I like the probe a little bit deeper. Your
[57:52] Speaker 1: impressions of the Gaza in the West Bank, and as
[57:55] Speaker 1: a British diplomat, did you have any sense of these
[57:59] Speaker 1: problems were just intractable, that they had no solution, or
[58:04] Speaker 1: at least there's no solution that we as Westerners could
[58:07] Speaker 1: really bring to them. I know that sounds hopeless, but
[58:10] Speaker 1: I think we have to talk about it.
[58:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think I think there's
[58:15] Speaker 2: a there is there is a there is a certain
[58:17] Speaker 2: there's a certain arrogance that we can have, I think,
[58:20] Speaker 2: especially Britain, with our colonial past and the influence that
[58:23] Speaker 2: we kind of had, especially in that region in the
[58:25] Speaker 2: in the twentieth century, that we can just turn up
[58:28] Speaker 2: and sort situations out. And you know, I think the
[58:33] Speaker 2: more time I spent there, the more I came to
[58:37] Speaker 2: appreciate that the complexity of that of that situation, the
[58:42] Speaker 2: more you come to appreciate that that people on both
[58:47] Speaker 2: sides have have legitimate claims to what they want and
[58:53] Speaker 2: they have a legitimate kind of problem problem with with
[58:57] Speaker 2: the other side. And that applies both within the Palestine
[59:00] Speaker 2: and within the Palestinian side of the internal Palestinian conflict
[59:05] Speaker 2: and the Palestinians radio conflict as well. And you can
[59:07] Speaker 2: see even in a wider context the kind of regional
[59:10] Speaker 2: conflict between Israel and and and others that is, you know,
[59:17] Speaker 2: is in the news right now. So when I went
[59:20] Speaker 2: out there, I'd say I was pretty optimistic and enthusiastic
[59:24] Speaker 2: that that this was going to be fixed by the time,
[59:27] Speaker 2: you know, I finished my posting, but I think by
[59:29] Speaker 2: the end of it, it was the divisions were deeper,
[59:34] Speaker 2: both internally on the Palestinian side and between Palestinian Palestinians
[59:38] Speaker 2: and Israelis. There was a real moment of hope though
[59:41] Speaker 2: when George Bush, George you know, George W. Bush, launched
[59:47] Speaker 2: his kind of what he called the Roadmap for Peace
[59:51] Speaker 2: and Condollez Rice was the I was, you know, Secretary
[59:55] Speaker 2: of State at the time, and there was a real
[59:58] Speaker 2: push there on kind of for both sides. But ultimately
[1:00:06] Speaker 2: I think it it could only go so far when
[1:00:10] Speaker 2: the Palestinians had their own internal conflict that was that
[1:00:13] Speaker 2: was playing out. And you know, it's from a personal
[1:00:17] Speaker 2: point of view, you could kind of imagine a situation
[1:00:20] Speaker 2: a bit like we had in Northern Ireland where you
[1:00:22] Speaker 2: had a split between You've got the IRA, but then
[1:00:25] Speaker 2: the kind of the political wing sort of distances itself
[1:00:31] Speaker 2: from the armed wing, gives up the armed struggle, moves
[1:00:34] Speaker 2: into politics. And I was sort of willing Hamas to
[1:00:38] Speaker 2: do that because that to me would have been the
[1:00:42] Speaker 2: most obvious solution, but it didn't happen, unfortunately, And equally
[1:00:46] Speaker 2: on the on the Israeli side had sympathies for these
[1:00:49] Speaker 2: rallies that they they said, you know, there's no one
[1:00:52] Speaker 2: we can really do business with that is representing the Palestinians.
[1:00:57] Speaker 2: But at the same time, these radies were building a
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: lot of set moments in the West especially in the
[1:01:02] Speaker 2: West Bank, and kind of expanding areas that they would
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: then deemed to be part of Israel, which under international
[1:01:10] Speaker 2: law weren't uh and that was creating that was sort
[1:01:16] Speaker 2: of almost making it harder to undo. If if your position,
[1:01:20] Speaker 2: which was the position of the UK at the time,
[1:01:22] Speaker 2: was that you supported a two state solution, that seemed
[1:01:25] Speaker 2: to be the best the best option for a kind
[1:01:29] Speaker 2: of lasting peace in that region, that area, but then
[1:01:35] Speaker 2: there were other issues that were kind of at play too.
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: So there's obviously something people don't talk about too much
[1:01:43] Speaker 2: is a very big Arab population inside Israel that was
[1:01:46] Speaker 2: growing quite fast. And so you think, well, if if
[1:01:53] Speaker 2: this is going to become one big territory that's just Israel,
[1:01:55] Speaker 2: it's actually going to end up with a majority Arab population.
[1:01:58] Speaker 2: And Israel has a Democrat political system, so they're going
[1:02:02] Speaker 2: to end up with you know, potentially a majority our government.
[1:02:07] Speaker 2: I mean to project ahead demographically so it's very hard
[1:02:12] Speaker 2: to The longer I was there, the more complex I
[1:02:15] Speaker 2: realized it was, and the more unfortunately I realized there
[1:02:18] Speaker 2: was no quick fix to it. Certainly nothing's going to
[1:02:21] Speaker 2: happen in my time. And then, of course, as we've
[1:02:23] Speaker 2: seen in the last a few years, it's very much
[1:02:27] Speaker 2: this security situation very much deteriorated since then with the
[1:02:30] Speaker 2: Hamas attack on Israel and then the warring Gaza and
[1:02:34] Speaker 2: the kind of you know, the impact of the impact
[1:02:37] Speaker 2: of that, the lasting impact.
[1:02:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, when you
[1:02:41] Speaker 1: were there, they almost seem like halcyon days by comparison,
[1:02:46] Speaker 1: now were about it as far as like, to even
[1:02:49] Speaker 1: talk about a two state solution today just feels so
[1:02:52] Speaker 1: naive and impossible. We got Israel invading, Webanon, spanding that
[1:03:00] Speaker 1: buffer between the two countries and and down into Syria
[1:03:04] Speaker 1: along the go On Heights, and then of course all
[1:03:06] Speaker 1: the carnage and Gaza. What do you see as the
[1:03:12] Speaker 1: maybe next twenty years for that region if you were to,
[1:03:15] Speaker 1: I know, predicting the future is impossible, especially in that
[1:03:17] Speaker 1: part of the world, but what do you think, based
[1:03:20] Speaker 1: on your experience where we're going here?
[1:03:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, very very hard to say. I think sadly,
[1:03:29] Speaker 2: I'm not I'm not optimistic about it. I mean, now
[1:03:31] Speaker 2: we're in twenty twenty six. You know, it was twenty
[1:03:34] Speaker 2: years ago that I was starting to read about reading
[1:03:38] Speaker 2: on this region and reading excuse me, on Israel Palestine especially,
[1:03:42] Speaker 2: and I tried to begin to understand that that region
[1:03:46] Speaker 2: and the situation now is is worse than it was
[1:03:50] Speaker 2: it was then twenty years from now. It's very hard
[1:03:56] Speaker 2: to see without a real change of politicians, if you like,
[1:04:01] Speaker 2: I think, I think one thing that's become quite apparent
[1:04:05] Speaker 2: is that, you know, Israel has gone more to the
[1:04:09] Speaker 2: right since I was there. When I was there had
[1:04:12] Speaker 2: a kind of center left coalition. Netan Yahoo was in opposition,
[1:04:17] Speaker 2: and what he's been able to do very effectively is
[1:04:22] Speaker 2: form coalitions with these parties on the religious right, these
[1:04:26] Speaker 2: very conservative parties, and they have a hugely expanding voter
[1:04:30] Speaker 2: base because a lot of the Orthodox and ultra Orthodox
[1:04:34] Speaker 2: communities in Israel are you know, typically having quite large families.
[1:04:39] Speaker 2: They still have a very high provision of state support
[1:04:43] Speaker 2: if you're engaged. Certainly, when I was there, and I
[1:04:45] Speaker 2: believe that the situation is the same now, if you're
[1:04:48] Speaker 2: engaged in full time religious study, you don't need to work.
[1:04:50] Speaker 2: You receive a kind of a stipend from the government.
[1:04:53] Speaker 2: And it's in the interest of politicians like Netta Yahoo
[1:04:58] Speaker 2: to ally with those groups and get them supporting him
[1:05:03] Speaker 2: and his policies because their interests are aligned in a
[1:05:07] Speaker 2: kind of quite quite a nationalistic, kind of hard hard
[1:05:12] Speaker 2: right way. You know, crazy things like Hamas's attack on Israel,
[1:05:19] Speaker 2: which I still don't understand now kind of, you know,
[1:05:22] Speaker 2: two and a half years on, I don't understand why
[1:05:25] Speaker 2: Hamas made that that decision to do that. Maybe they
[1:05:29] Speaker 2: didn't even really make a decision about it, just kind
[1:05:31] Speaker 2: of it just spiraled out of control from an initial attack.
[1:05:37] Speaker 2: It's just total madness on their part and what it precipitated.
[1:05:41] Speaker 2: But that's that's fueled those people on on the right
[1:05:45] Speaker 2: who who who say, you know, Guss is just a
[1:05:50] Speaker 2: security threat, the neighbors are a security threat, and it's
[1:05:55] Speaker 2: it's that the country becomes kind of in recently militarized
[1:06:01] Speaker 2: and you don't have that will to make concessions and
[1:06:05] Speaker 2: peace deals that we saw back in the nineties and
[1:06:09] Speaker 2: kind of the impact through that kind of lasted or
[1:06:14] Speaker 2: had a resurgence in the early two thousand, mid to
[1:06:17] Speaker 2: late two thousands, I should say. So with those demographic trends,
[1:06:23] Speaker 2: it's really hard to see any improvement, frankly, and when
[1:06:27] Speaker 2: there's no prospect of improvement, then the realistic outcome is
[1:06:31] Speaker 2: probably more conflict. I'm sad to say.
[1:06:34] Speaker 1: I recently saw an interview with the American Ambassador to Israel,
[1:06:39] Speaker 1: Mike Huckabee, and this guy sat there and said, he's
[1:06:43] Speaker 1: perfectly okay if Israel wants to take over everything from
[1:06:46] Speaker 1: the Nile to the Euphrates, because it says so in
[1:06:49] Speaker 1: the Bible. I mean, you watch this kind of thing
[1:06:53] Speaker 1: and it's like this is a full blown disaster. There's
[1:06:56] Speaker 1: no other term you can use to describe it.
[1:07:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's there's that. That's another thing that is
[1:07:03] Speaker 2: that that influence of for kind of uh, the sort
[1:07:07] Speaker 2: of religious aspect, if you like. And you know, I
[1:07:10] Speaker 2: think we're we're we used to certainly, certainly we think
[1:07:17] Speaker 2: mostly in the in the West, religion not playing a
[1:07:20] Speaker 2: particularly big part in government and decisions in government, but
[1:07:25] Speaker 2: increasingly it is doing in in in that region. And
[1:07:30] Speaker 2: then when you hear yeah about kind of Western Western
[1:07:33] Speaker 2: support along those lines. Ah, you think, I'm not sure
[1:07:38] Speaker 2: where where this is gonna this is gonna end without
[1:07:42] Speaker 2: some major changes of personalities unfortunately.
[1:07:45] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And so when you left Gaza, where did
[1:07:50] Speaker 1: the Foreign Office and do next?
[1:07:54] Speaker 2: Well, after that, I went back to London and I
[1:07:56] Speaker 2: was working on a working on a polo team in London.
[1:08:00] Speaker 2: So then it was my ten to kind of gather
[1:08:02] Speaker 2: that information from our representatives overseas and kind of process
[1:08:06] Speaker 2: that through into policy advice. And at this point I
[1:08:09] Speaker 2: was doing that a slightly more senior level. I was
[1:08:13] Speaker 2: focusing on the Gulf, and so there were it was
[1:08:17] Speaker 2: a more it was less at that time, less of
[1:08:21] Speaker 2: a kind of conflict management or conflict post conflict reconstruction
[1:08:26] Speaker 2: type of type of role, and it was more about
[1:08:30] Speaker 2: kind of economic diplomacy. It was more about business interests.
[1:08:33] Speaker 2: There was a lot to do with kind of oil
[1:08:35] Speaker 2: and gas and energy security, those kinds of issues, and
[1:08:40] Speaker 2: to me that was a little bit less interesting, I
[1:08:42] Speaker 2: think than the conflict related diplomacy. Although it was good
[1:08:48] Speaker 2: to have a chance to get a bit of a
[1:08:50] Speaker 2: breather from those environments, be able to see more friends
[1:08:53] Speaker 2: and family back in London. Of course, But what happened
[1:08:57] Speaker 2: for me at that point was that I really started
[1:08:59] Speaker 2: to develop an interest in psychology, and I think that
[1:09:03] Speaker 2: had come out of being in those conflict zones and
[1:09:06] Speaker 2: seeing the impact of conflict on people emotionally, cognitively, and
[1:09:14] Speaker 2: in some cases, you know, people developing post traumatic stress
[1:09:18] Speaker 2: disorder other kind of trauma symptoms. Certainly, I know when
[1:09:22] Speaker 2: I when I came back from from Iraq, I was
[1:09:27] Speaker 2: definitely very jumpy. Anything that kind of went bang, I
[1:09:31] Speaker 2: would I would be, you know, suddenly my heart would
[1:09:34] Speaker 2: start beating, the adrenaline would start pumping, and it was
[1:09:37] Speaker 2: it was it was a trigger from those days where
[1:09:40] Speaker 2: you know, we were being rocketed and mortared in our
[1:09:43] Speaker 2: base and there was a real risk to life from that.
[1:09:48] Speaker 2: But I started kind of being a bit more interested
[1:09:52] Speaker 2: in really the individual impact of these big scale geopolitics.
[1:09:57] Speaker 2: And maybe a part of that was also feeling a
[1:10:01] Speaker 2: little bit helpless after having spent three years in Jerusalem
[1:10:04] Speaker 2: and seeing that situation deteriorate, seeing the Iraq situation to deteriorate,
[1:10:09] Speaker 2: and thinking, well, there's maybe not so much I can
[1:10:12] Speaker 2: do about these there's big scale politics, you know, without
[1:10:17] Speaker 2: going into politics, which didn't really appeal to me, but
[1:10:20] Speaker 2: I am interested in understanding more about the impact on
[1:10:22] Speaker 2: the individual. So I actually started studying psychology part time.
[1:10:28] Speaker 2: And yeah, there was an old There was an old
[1:10:30] Speaker 2: scheme which they've since they've since scrapped, where whereby if
[1:10:34] Speaker 2: you wanted to study something that was related to your
[1:10:37] Speaker 2: job in the Foreign Surface Service, they would give you
[1:10:40] Speaker 2: a little bit of time off to do it. They
[1:10:41] Speaker 2: would pay some of the course fees. So I enrolled
[1:10:44] Speaker 2: in a psychology course at UCL in London, and I
[1:10:50] Speaker 2: started kind of studying there and just getting more interested
[1:10:54] Speaker 2: in psychology, and at some point it actually reached a
[1:10:59] Speaker 2: reached stage where I thought, in fact that I don't
[1:11:02] Speaker 2: think I want that lifestyle of constantly moving overseas and
[1:11:06] Speaker 2: up ending my life and leaving everyone and everything I
[1:11:10] Speaker 2: know behind and starting from scratch, if you like, in
[1:11:13] Speaker 2: a new place. But actually I want to stay in
[1:11:15] Speaker 2: the UK and see if I can switch careers into psychology.
[1:11:21] Speaker 2: And it kind of kind of started to look seriously
[1:11:25] Speaker 2: at that.
[1:11:27] Speaker 1: I mean, did you pursue that. Did you leave the
[1:11:29] Speaker 1: Foreigner Office to go and get another degree?
[1:11:33] Speaker 2: I did, Yeah, I did. So it was a very
[1:11:37] Speaker 2: difficult decision and you know, there are a few jobs
[1:11:40] Speaker 2: that were coming up. And this was actually just before
[1:11:44] Speaker 2: the Arab Spring, so always kind of it was kind
[1:11:50] Speaker 2: of around that time. So there was conflict going on
[1:11:54] Speaker 2: in Libya, and there was the possibility of going there,
[1:11:57] Speaker 2: and you know, I thought about that and thought maybe not.
[1:12:01] Speaker 2: There was there was a possibility of going to Yemen.
[1:12:03] Speaker 2: There was Damascus, and I kind of thought I realized,
[1:12:07] Speaker 2: you know, basically I was being I was getting kind
[1:12:11] Speaker 2: of pigeonholed as this, you know, the Arabic conflict guy.
[1:12:16] Speaker 2: And I thought to myself, do I want this for
[1:12:19] Speaker 2: the next kind of ten plus years. And I thought
[1:12:23] Speaker 2: to myself, actually, maybe I'm going to quit while I'm ahead,
[1:12:27] Speaker 2: And so I did. I quit the job, thinking, you know,
[1:12:31] Speaker 2: if this doesn't work out, hopefully I can Hopefully they'll
[1:12:34] Speaker 2: help me back at some point. But it did start
[1:12:38] Speaker 2: to work out, and I followed the interest in psychology.
[1:12:42] Speaker 2: I went back to university. So I was their age,
[1:12:45] Speaker 2: you know, thirty twenty nine thirty with all these these
[1:12:49] Speaker 2: undergrads who are kind of eighteen nineteen, and I was
[1:12:52] Speaker 2: the kind of keen guy at the front taking notes.
[1:12:54] Speaker 2: The rest of them are all on their phones like
[1:12:56] Speaker 2: half asleep or whatever at the back of the lecture theater.
[1:13:00] Speaker 2: But I was. I was very motivated at that point
[1:13:02] Speaker 2: because I thought this could be a new and new
[1:13:04] Speaker 2: career for me, and I knew some I had some
[1:13:06] Speaker 2: friends who worked as clinical psychologists in our National Health Service,
[1:13:11] Speaker 2: particularly a couple of people who who were specialists in
[1:13:14] Speaker 2: treating PTSD post traumatic stress disorder, and that was very
[1:13:20] Speaker 2: interesting to me, coming from the conflict background and having
[1:13:23] Speaker 2: experienced a few of those symptoms myself. And so I
[1:13:28] Speaker 2: ended up kind of volunteering a bit in our health
[1:13:30] Speaker 2: service doing some work there, and eventually went to work
[1:13:35] Speaker 2: in the health service as a psychologist and started to
[1:13:38] Speaker 2: specialize in working with trauma.
[1:13:42] Speaker 1: Interesting, So you specialized in clinical psychology yourself as well.
[1:13:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I did. While I was studying, I
[1:13:51] Speaker 2: was doing research studies as well, and a lot of
[1:13:55] Speaker 2: that was was trauma focused. And then and then moving
[1:14:00] Speaker 2: into actually working starting to work as a therapist with
[1:14:03] Speaker 2: people who were experiencing PTSD, which was actually fascinating because
[1:14:10] Speaker 2: PTSD is one of those conditions that anybody could experience.
[1:14:15] Speaker 2: I mean, you know, the next time you step out
[1:14:18] Speaker 2: of your house, there might be some kind of some
[1:14:20] Speaker 2: kind of road accident. You might hear something, look out
[1:14:23] Speaker 2: your window and you see a violent incident unfolding on
[1:14:28] Speaker 2: the street outside your house, and you know, you can
[1:14:31] Speaker 2: end up experiencing PTSD because of that. It can happen
[1:14:34] Speaker 2: to anyone almost any time. So it's very kind of
[1:14:39] Speaker 2: relatable in that sense, but it's also very treatable. So
[1:14:45] Speaker 2: the way of treating it is that you or the
[1:14:47] Speaker 2: main way of treating it with a kind of talking
[1:14:48] Speaker 2: therapy is to get people to describe the experience as
[1:14:52] Speaker 2: it happened to them and start to unpack bits of
[1:14:55] Speaker 2: it that are particularly significant, particularly frightening for them, and
[1:15:01] Speaker 2: try try to help them process those memories. So, you know,
[1:15:05] Speaker 2: working with that in London, you've got people from all
[1:15:08] Speaker 2: walks of life. You've got former services personnel, you've got
[1:15:12] Speaker 2: you know, been in Iraq and Afghanistan. You've got people
[1:15:14] Speaker 2: who've been victims of terrorist attacks in London or elsewhere
[1:15:19] Speaker 2: in the UK. You've got refugees, you've got people who
[1:15:23] Speaker 2: fled conflict, who've been political prisoners, victims of torture, victims
[1:15:27] Speaker 2: of human trafficking, victims of crime, gang crime, as well
[1:15:32] Speaker 2: as just the standard stuff like I say, standard you know,
[1:15:36] Speaker 2: accidents that caused people to you know, like road traffic
[1:15:41] Speaker 2: accidents that can cause people to have traumatic experiences as well.
[1:15:47] Speaker 2: So you're dealing with dealing with all of that. Yeah,
[1:15:50] Speaker 2: really really fascinating and kind of linked through to that
[1:15:54] Speaker 2: foreign office work as well.
[1:15:57] Speaker 1: Were you in our private practice?
[1:16:01] Speaker 2: No, I worked in our in our health service, so yeah,
[1:16:04] Speaker 2: So so basically it was, uh, in the UK we
[1:16:08] Speaker 2: have a national health service, so it's basically more or
[1:16:12] Speaker 2: less depending on the situation, the situation free healthcare and
[1:16:19] Speaker 2: if you if you're experiencing this, you can go along
[1:16:22] Speaker 2: and see a local doctor and they can then send
[1:16:25] Speaker 2: you to a therapist and eventually it kind of scales
[1:16:29] Speaker 2: up to the point where you'd see a trauma specialist
[1:16:33] Speaker 2: and you and you get you get treatment. So yeah,
[1:16:35] Speaker 2: we had people from all walks of.
[1:16:37] Speaker 1: Life, so we uh. Of course, you know, talk to
[1:16:42] Speaker 1: a lot of veterans on this on this podcast and
[1:16:45] Speaker 1: a lot of them watch it as well. Do you
[1:16:48] Speaker 1: have any advice for somebody that is, you know, going
[1:16:51] Speaker 1: through the process of having post traumatic stress and they're
[1:16:54] Speaker 1: struggling with it, what steps do you think they should
[1:16:57] Speaker 1: take to get that treated. You know, it could be
[1:17:01] Speaker 1: in America or Britain, whatever the case.
[1:17:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I mean it's I think it's worth saying that,
[1:17:08] Speaker 2: you know, post traumatic stress disorder and post traumatic stress symptoms,
[1:17:15] Speaker 2: that could just be a kind of less less developed
[1:17:19] Speaker 2: version of that, but still problematic and causing people, you know,
[1:17:23] Speaker 2: issues with their kind of functioning, their mood in day
[1:17:26] Speaker 2: to day life, making things difficult for them that they
[1:17:29] Speaker 2: want to do. It can happen, it can come on
[1:17:32] Speaker 2: many years after the events. So you know, we saw
[1:17:36] Speaker 2: veterans who who had you know, they they'd served a
[1:17:41] Speaker 2: long time ago in previous conflicts. The UK had been
[1:17:45] Speaker 2: involved in the Balkans conflicts, the Falklands or Northern Ireland
[1:17:50] Speaker 2: and places like that, and years later the symptoms might
[1:17:54] Speaker 2: come up for them, depending on other triggers and situations
[1:17:57] Speaker 2: in their in their lives, and they might find that
[1:18:02] Speaker 2: they are kind of particularly jumpy, watchful, you know what
[1:18:06] Speaker 2: we call hyper vigilant. They're avoiding stuff that they would
[1:18:10] Speaker 2: otherwise want to do because it's triggering off, you know,
[1:18:13] Speaker 2: memories for them. And that might be something as as
[1:18:17] Speaker 2: every day as kind of driving, getting in your car
[1:18:19] Speaker 2: and driving and all of a sudden when you've got
[1:18:21] Speaker 2: oncoming traffic, suddenly these memories are coming back to you.
[1:18:26] Speaker 2: What tends to happen is, in the first instance, a
[1:18:30] Speaker 2: lot of especially a lot of a lot of men,
[1:18:32] Speaker 2: a lot of veterans will try and kind of self
[1:18:37] Speaker 2: medicate rather than seek help, you know, because there are
[1:18:39] Speaker 2: people who've been taught to be very self reliant, they'll
[1:18:42] Speaker 2: often kind of go for a drink and you know,
[1:18:46] Speaker 2: one drink can turn into two and people can end
[1:18:49] Speaker 2: up with with a problem that ends up kind of
[1:18:51] Speaker 2: masking the underlying issues. And I think that the main
[1:18:56] Speaker 2: message is if you're experiencing that, then it's best to
[1:19:03] Speaker 2: just just talk to someone. These are very normal experiences.
[1:19:06] Speaker 2: It doesn't mean you haven't coped with the situation. You know,
[1:19:12] Speaker 2: you're someone who's had to cope with extraordinary situations that
[1:19:15] Speaker 2: most members of the public would never, never have to
[1:19:18] Speaker 2: deal with and not be able to deal with. And
[1:19:20] Speaker 2: it's very understandable that with those pressures that have been
[1:19:23] Speaker 2: put on a lot of service personnel that the effects,
[1:19:26] Speaker 2: those psychological effects can can come home kind of many
[1:19:30] Speaker 2: many years later. And there are specialist veteran services in
[1:19:34] Speaker 2: the UK. There's an organization called Combat Stress which works
[1:19:39] Speaker 2: especially with veterans, and I'm sure there are equivalent services
[1:19:45] Speaker 2: in the US two And maybe we can post something
[1:19:49] Speaker 2: in the in the in the comments here that might
[1:19:52] Speaker 2: be a place for people to look. And the main
[1:19:57] Speaker 2: thing I would say is is you know, if you
[1:20:01] Speaker 2: notice that there's some some things that you're not able
[1:20:05] Speaker 2: to do that you want to do, and you think
[1:20:06] Speaker 2: that experiences that happened to you in the past are
[1:20:09] Speaker 2: the root cause of that, then talking to someone about
[1:20:12] Speaker 2: it is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign
[1:20:15] Speaker 2: of strength, and it will help you to get back
[1:20:18] Speaker 2: that life you had before, in the life you want
[1:20:21] Speaker 2: to live. And PTSD is extremely treatable, really responds to treatment,
[1:20:27] Speaker 2: and there are people who can help.
[1:20:29] Speaker 1: When you talk about how it can come and hit
[1:20:32] Speaker 1: people years later, something I've noticed with men, but presumably
[1:20:39] Speaker 1: this can happen to women as well. When men retire
[1:20:43] Speaker 1: and suddenly their life slows down and they have time
[1:20:46] Speaker 1: to process all these things, it seems like they get
[1:20:50] Speaker 1: hit really hard.
[1:20:53] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, big life transitions are often kind
[1:20:57] Speaker 2: of catalysts for onset of symptoms. Could be retirement, it
[1:21:01] Speaker 2: could be divorce or breakup, of a relationship. It could
[1:21:05] Speaker 2: be bereathement, grief, you know, loss of a loved one.
[1:21:09] Speaker 2: Sometimes it could be loss of a job. Sometimes these
[1:21:12] Speaker 2: things that change how we see ourselves in the world
[1:21:16] Speaker 2: and our sense of kind of purpose and who we
[1:21:19] Speaker 2: are can bring up these these these these memories and
[1:21:25] Speaker 2: and give them a new significance that perhaps we we yeah,
[1:21:29] Speaker 2: either we didn't appreciate before or like you say, you
[1:21:33] Speaker 2: kind of if you're working, you're you're not given time
[1:21:37] Speaker 2: to process those those past experiences. And it's only when
[1:21:41] Speaker 2: life slows down a bit and perhaps the meaning of
[1:21:44] Speaker 2: your life changes a little bit that you start to
[1:21:46] Speaker 2: think about what happened there. So so yeah, it's those
[1:21:52] Speaker 2: big life transitions are huge flashpoints for the onset of symptoms. Absolutely.
[1:21:58] Speaker 1: Are you still practicing psychology?
[1:22:03] Speaker 2: No, not not as a not as a therapist. I
[1:22:07] Speaker 2: do still work as a psychologist, but kind of also
[1:22:10] Speaker 2: with a you know, my my my other background from
[1:22:13] Speaker 2: foreign service and particularly with the kind of security issues
[1:22:18] Speaker 2: with both hats on for a cyber security consultancy, so
[1:22:21] Speaker 2: I analyze inside of risk and and and threats for them,
[1:22:28] Speaker 2: particularly kind of espionage and state state threats, and I
[1:22:32] Speaker 2: do that alongside writing novels. So that's my that's my life. Now.
[1:22:37] Speaker 1: I was going to say, with your background, you'd be
[1:22:39] Speaker 1: like a very good candidate I think for like a
[1:22:42] Speaker 1: crisis negotiator or something like that.
[1:22:48] Speaker 2: Well yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess a bit of psychology,
[1:22:53] Speaker 2: but a diplomacy.
[1:22:55] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:22:56] Speaker 2: The one experience I had with that talking to some
[1:23:00] Speaker 2: talking to some some some Libyans. Luckily it did, it
[1:23:04] Speaker 2: did kind of work out. But yeah, huge pressure. In fact,
[1:23:07] Speaker 2: I was watching a very good documentary recently about some
[1:23:11] Speaker 2: journalists who were kidnapped in Syria and on the BBC,
[1:23:16] Speaker 2: and yeah, the the the hostage negotiator he was brought
[1:23:21] Speaker 2: in to deal with that and he ended up in
[1:23:22] Speaker 2: some extremely sketchy situations in Syria. Uh. Yeah, so that
[1:23:30] Speaker 2: as long as I can do it on the other
[1:23:31] Speaker 2: end of the phone.
[1:23:32] Speaker 1: Maybe, So tell us how the spy novels came about.
[1:23:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of started really, I suppose I was.
[1:23:46] Speaker 2: I was always a fan of thrillers, generally crime novels,
[1:23:49] Speaker 2: and I suppose working in our health service in in
[1:23:54] Speaker 2: London with a lot of victims of crime and even
[1:23:57] Speaker 2: in some cases some perpetrators of crime, I still remember
[1:24:00] Speaker 2: the traumatized, the traumatized drug dealer. I had to I
[1:24:03] Speaker 2: had to work with who was who had been the
[1:24:06] Speaker 2: victim of attempted murder and was experiencing trauma as a
[1:24:13] Speaker 2: result of that. Hearing these hearing these stories, I kind
[1:24:16] Speaker 2: of thought, you know, might be interesting to write something
[1:24:21] Speaker 2: about that. And actually was my sister who who prompted
[1:24:24] Speaker 2: me to do that. She's a novelist. She writes historical
[1:24:28] Speaker 2: kind of murder mystery spy thrillers set in Elizabethan times
[1:24:32] Speaker 2: in the UK and under under the name S. J. Paris,
[1:24:38] Speaker 2: and she encouraged me to just have a go. She said,
[1:24:41] Speaker 2: you know, with your experience kind of the things you've done,
[1:24:44] Speaker 2: you know, you'd have an interest. You could tell some
[1:24:47] Speaker 2: interesting stories. So I started kind of playing around with this,
[1:24:50] Speaker 2: messing around with it, and it started out as a
[1:24:52] Speaker 2: very cathartic experience where I'd come home from work in
[1:24:56] Speaker 2: the Health Service I've been doing, you know, therapy sessions,
[1:25:00] Speaker 2: and I'd sit there and I'd write and I've realized
[1:25:03] Speaker 2: I came to realize eventually that this writing fiction was
[1:25:08] Speaker 2: my way of dealing with of processing my memories both
[1:25:11] Speaker 2: from my time in the Foreign Service, and the stress
[1:25:13] Speaker 2: of working in the in the health service with people
[1:25:16] Speaker 2: who had PTSD and other kind of kinds of mental
[1:25:19] Speaker 2: health conditions, and at some point, I think at the
[1:25:24] Speaker 2: beginning it just you know, it wasn't very good, but
[1:25:27] Speaker 2: I was kind of enjoying it. And then I practiced
[1:25:29] Speaker 2: and improved and got some feedback from some people, and
[1:25:33] Speaker 2: eventually got to the point where I published a crime novel,
[1:25:35] Speaker 2: and that was a really detective story. The first story
[1:25:38] Speaker 2: I'd ever written was a kind of mash up detective
[1:25:41] Speaker 2: stories spy thriller, and I remember this got shown to
[1:25:46] Speaker 2: a few publishers and they kind of went, you know,
[1:25:49] Speaker 2: no thanks, it's kind of weird mash up. And then
[1:25:53] Speaker 2: a couple of years later, I Am a book called
[1:25:56] Speaker 2: I Am Pilgrim came along. I don't know if you've
[1:25:59] Speaker 2: come up cross that that was also a kind of
[1:26:01] Speaker 2: It was a mash up detective stories spy thriller and
[1:26:04] Speaker 2: was incredibly successful. Also, I should add, much better written
[1:26:09] Speaker 2: than anything I had produced, But that was kind of
[1:26:13] Speaker 2: that was kind of inspiring. By that point though, I'd
[1:26:16] Speaker 2: gone down the roote of writing detective stories, so I
[1:26:19] Speaker 2: did that for a while, but it always had there
[1:26:22] Speaker 2: was always a character who had a kind of ex
[1:26:23] Speaker 2: military background. There was always a lot of psychology in there.
[1:26:27] Speaker 2: There was somebody who was in a trauma treatment session
[1:26:31] Speaker 2: with a therapist. There was always these kind of themes
[1:26:33] Speaker 2: coming up. And then eventually I decided that I was
[1:26:40] Speaker 2: going to kind of kind of step back from the
[1:26:42] Speaker 2: contract I had with the publisher at the time, where
[1:26:44] Speaker 2: they wanted me to write more psychological thrillers. This is
[1:26:48] Speaker 2: the kind of you know, small cast of characters, often
[1:26:52] Speaker 2: unreliable narrata, probably being kind of gas lit by their
[1:26:56] Speaker 2: intimate partner who's maybe also trying to kill them like that,
[1:27:00] Speaker 2: that kind of story. And I thought, I'm going to
[1:27:03] Speaker 2: write the book I just want to write, and I
[1:27:06] Speaker 2: don't actually care whether anybody publishes it or not. And
[1:27:10] Speaker 2: that turned into this book, which is committed. And this
[1:27:14] Speaker 2: was set in America. I used to live in the States,
[1:27:17] Speaker 2: and we didn't actually mention that when you I was
[1:27:20] Speaker 2: just describing upbringing. But I spent a year living in
[1:27:23] Speaker 2: the US relatives in the East Coast, and I went
[1:27:28] Speaker 2: to live there and went to school for a year
[1:27:31] Speaker 2: in the US, and I spent a lot of time
[1:27:34] Speaker 2: while I was there in rural Pennsylvania, which is really
[1:27:38] Speaker 2: interesting area because you've got a lot of people from
[1:27:44] Speaker 2: that kind of those kind of very traditional backgrounds who
[1:27:48] Speaker 2: live in that big space between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. And
[1:27:54] Speaker 2: so I had an idea for a book that was
[1:27:56] Speaker 2: a kind of a conspiracy thriller. It was a terrorism thriller,
[1:28:00] Speaker 2: and I thought, I'm going to write that and set
[1:28:03] Speaker 2: it in Pennsylvania. And I had a lot of fun
[1:28:08] Speaker 2: writing that and trying to write in the American voice
[1:28:11] Speaker 2: as well, and according to a couple of a couple
[1:28:14] Speaker 2: of American friends who read it, is more or less
[1:28:17] Speaker 2: okay in terms of vernacular vocabulary, that that kind of thing.
[1:28:23] Speaker 2: But I drew on a lot of those experiences, and
[1:28:25] Speaker 2: that was the kind of first foray into something that was,
[1:28:29] Speaker 2: or a second foray if you like, into more of
[1:28:32] Speaker 2: the spy genre. And then I really took the plunge
[1:28:35] Speaker 2: on writing a kind of spy action thriller with Octagon,
[1:28:41] Speaker 2: which is is coming out in the UK in a
[1:28:44] Speaker 2: couple of weeks. And this this is a as I said,
[1:28:51] Speaker 2: it's a spy action thriller. So it's about a former
[1:28:54] Speaker 2: intelligence officer from m I six secret Intelligence Service who
[1:28:58] Speaker 2: teams up with her ex lover, ex boyfriend on and off,
[1:29:03] Speaker 2: who is a former SAS operator, and they met in Iraq,
[1:29:09] Speaker 2: something which may may or may not have been based
[1:29:11] Speaker 2: on some real life scenarios, and they head off on
[1:29:15] Speaker 2: a journey across Europe to track down a this kind
[1:29:20] Speaker 2: of unknown enemy that's plotting a mass casualty terror attack
[1:29:25] Speaker 2: and try and untangle this mystery around it and stop
[1:29:28] Speaker 2: that attack before it takes place with a huge kind
[1:29:32] Speaker 2: of loss of human life. So it's very international, it's
[1:29:37] Speaker 2: kind of pacey, it's got the espionage elements, it's got
[1:29:40] Speaker 2: the military elements, and circling back a little bit, Jack
[1:29:44] Speaker 2: to the earlier part of our conversation, I was able
[1:29:48] Speaker 2: to draw on the knowledge of some of my friends
[1:29:52] Speaker 2: and contacts who've worked in those agencies and really try
[1:29:56] Speaker 2: and get the details as accurate as possible without obviously
[1:30:00] Speaker 2: breaking the official secret sect. So I hope it's it's
[1:30:05] Speaker 2: it's authentic, and it's definitely past muster with a few
[1:30:08] Speaker 2: people in Lana Berry, Is Berry, Jack Carr, Charles Beaumont,
[1:30:15] Speaker 2: James Wolf and Julian Fisher, and some of these people
[1:30:18] Speaker 2: have have given it their endorsements, so hopefully it is.
[1:30:22] Speaker 1: It is authentic, three, three of whom have been on
[1:30:25] Speaker 1: this show before. So there's that I'm you know, I
[1:30:31] Speaker 1: don't like to ask you and I mean I write
[1:30:34] Speaker 1: action also, and I think a big part of what
[1:30:39] Speaker 1: I'm trying to do is show you the action when
[1:30:42] Speaker 1: I when I write the book. But I wanted to
[1:30:44] Speaker 1: ask from your perspective if there's something that you wanted
[1:30:47] Speaker 1: to say like that. I recently read a point of
[1:30:50] Speaker 1: view that Ian Fleming's James Bond was a kind of
[1:30:54] Speaker 1: comment about the relevancy of the British in the aftermath
[1:30:58] Speaker 1: of Empire as actually, you know what what Britain's sort
[1:31:03] Speaker 1: of like relevancy around the world during the Cold War era?
[1:31:07] Speaker 1: What do you see as that maybe the role, if
[1:31:09] Speaker 1: not your own work of spion arge thrillers are today.
[1:31:16] Speaker 2: Yeah, great, great question actually, because I think they have
[1:31:18] Speaker 2: had a bit of a resurgence there. There are new
[1:31:21] Speaker 2: authors coming through in the genre, some fantastic writers on
[1:31:26] Speaker 2: on on your side of the pond. They've they've McCloskey
[1:31:30] Speaker 2: as well as the Nana Barry and others and uh
[1:31:34] Speaker 2: and over here too. And I think it's no accident
[1:31:39] Speaker 2: that as we've seen, you know, conflicts involving Russia kind
[1:31:47] Speaker 2: of escalating the last few years. We've we've we've come
[1:31:52] Speaker 2: to recognize some of the extent of the threat that
[1:31:57] Speaker 2: may be posed by by China, and then of course
[1:32:00] Speaker 2: what we've seen with Iran in the recent months. I
[1:32:04] Speaker 2: think it shows that these kind of geopolitical issues are
[1:32:10] Speaker 2: of interest to people and they want to be able
[1:32:12] Speaker 2: to understand them, but they also want to kind of
[1:32:16] Speaker 2: in a way know that the situations are going to
[1:32:19] Speaker 2: be okay. So they want perhaps this mash up between
[1:32:24] Speaker 2: the reality of a geopolitical threat a state threat, you know,
[1:32:29] Speaker 2: where you might have a country that is planning, that
[1:32:33] Speaker 2: is sponsoring an act of terrorism, or you might have
[1:32:37] Speaker 2: a foreign intelligence service that's planning to assassinate somebody in
[1:32:40] Speaker 2: your country. They want the realism of that, but they
[1:32:44] Speaker 2: also want the escapism of kind of knowing that there's
[1:32:47] Speaker 2: a hero who can make it all okay at the end,
[1:32:51] Speaker 2: but that that hero perhaps isn't necessarily the kind of
[1:32:55] Speaker 2: bulletproof character of decades gone past, but somebody who is
[1:33:00] Speaker 2: a bit more rounded, maybe a bit more vulnerable, maybe
[1:33:04] Speaker 2: has some some relatable kind of psychological challenges as well,
[1:33:10] Speaker 2: and so I think when you put those things together,
[1:33:14] Speaker 2: and you you add the catalyst of writers, particularly in
[1:33:19] Speaker 2: the UK like mckhern, who've kind of re energized that
[1:33:23] Speaker 2: that spy genre after the death of you know, John
[1:33:27] Speaker 2: McCarey with with humor and satire. So we can also
[1:33:32] Speaker 2: kind of in difficult economic and confusing political times, we
[1:33:36] Speaker 2: can also poke fun at the people in power and
[1:33:40] Speaker 2: kind of see how ridiculous some of them are and
[1:33:44] Speaker 2: some of their decisions. You put all that together and
[1:33:47] Speaker 2: I think it's quite good, quite a good basis for
[1:33:52] Speaker 2: for spy fiction, for the interest in in spy fiction,
[1:33:55] Speaker 2: and that it can it can be those things to
[1:33:59] Speaker 2: read it.
[1:34:01] Speaker 1: And so Committed is out now. Octagon is coming out
[1:34:04] Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks. What's the publication date in
[1:34:07] Speaker 1: the UK?
[1:34:10] Speaker 2: Octagon at the publication date is twenty eighth of May.
[1:34:14] Speaker 2: So yeah, if if you're if you're watching this in
[1:34:17] Speaker 2: in the US, hopefully you'll be able to order it
[1:34:21] Speaker 2: off the UK website if you were, if you're interested
[1:34:23] Speaker 2: to read or maybe download you know, the book version.
[1:34:27] Speaker 2: There will be an audio audio version of it too
[1:34:31] Speaker 2: coming around that time. And yeah, US publication hopefully at
[1:34:39] Speaker 2: some at some point after.
[1:34:40] Speaker 1: That, and we'll have some links down the description for
[1:34:44] Speaker 1: our viewers who want to find the books. Chris, is
[1:34:48] Speaker 1: there is there anything else that you'd like to talk about,
[1:34:51] Speaker 1: anything you'd like to touch upon in this interview before
[1:34:53] Speaker 1: we get going.
[1:34:57] Speaker 2: Uh? Well, I think I think the way that we've
[1:35:04] Speaker 2: covered the issues kind of chronologically has been really interested,
[1:35:11] Speaker 2: I hope interesting for listeners to kind of go on
[1:35:15] Speaker 2: that hopefully go on that journey with me over the
[1:35:18] Speaker 2: last kind of twenty twenty twenty five years or so
[1:35:24] Speaker 2: through those geopolitical issues and kind of see the thread
[1:35:28] Speaker 2: of how that's evolved in terms of my interests and
[1:35:34] Speaker 2: where that's kind of taken me today. So I don't
[1:35:37] Speaker 2: think there's anything that I can think of particularly that
[1:35:40] Speaker 2: we haven't covered or that I really want to add
[1:35:44] Speaker 2: in at this point. But yeah, mainly to thank people
[1:35:48] Speaker 2: for listening. I hope it's been interesting. I hope it's
[1:35:50] Speaker 2: been useful, and I hope it kind of also shows
[1:35:54] Speaker 2: people that you can follow your interests as they evolve
[1:36:00] Speaker 2: over over time and find a sense of meaning in
[1:36:04] Speaker 2: in what you're doing and a sense of inspiration. Uh two, Yeah,
[1:36:10] Speaker 2: to follow your interests.
[1:36:13] Speaker 1: Where can people find you on the Internet. Do you
[1:36:15] Speaker 1: have a website or anywhere else social media anything?
[1:36:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, I have. I have a website which is c
[1:36:22] Speaker 2: Jmerit dot co dot uk. So so c J M
[1:36:27] Speaker 2: M E double R I double T dot co dot UK.
[1:36:33] Speaker 2: I'm on x as a doctor c J Merit and
[1:36:40] Speaker 2: I'm on Instagram as well as Chris J. Merrit. So
[1:36:46] Speaker 2: there's I don't put. I don't post too much on there,
[1:36:49] Speaker 2: but certainly the website, I would say, is an interesting
[1:36:53] Speaker 2: place to look if you want to find out about
[1:36:56] Speaker 2: maybe some of those past past books and bit more
[1:37:00] Speaker 2: about my background, or to get in touch with me.
[1:37:04] Speaker 1: Great. Well, thank you so much Chris for joining us.
[1:37:07] Speaker 1: I really appreciate it, and thank you everyone who joined
[1:37:11] Speaker 1: us on the show tonight. And we'll see all of
[1:37:14] Speaker 1: you next time. And say hi to Julian and Charles
[1:37:17] Speaker 1: to me for me when you meet.
[1:37:20] Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see I'll be sure to do that. Cheers Jack.
[1:37:28] Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I want to take a moment to tell
[1:37:30] Speaker 1: you about the Team House podcast newsletter. If you go
[1:37:33] Speaker 1: and subscribe, it's totally free, and what it will do
[1:37:37] Speaker 1: is aggregate all of our data, all of our content
[1:37:40] Speaker 1: that we put out the things that are on the
[1:37:43] Speaker 1: team House on our geopolitics podcast, Eyes On, things that
[1:37:48] Speaker 1: I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high Side,
[1:37:52] Speaker 1: anything else that we have going on, books, we recommend
[1:37:56] Speaker 1: upcoming guests that we have coming on the show, and
[1:38:00] Speaker 1: also you know, filtering in some fun stuff in there
[1:38:02] Speaker 1: as well. If you go and check it out. We
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