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When I started work at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1969, it was in many ways a different world from today. It was considered a sign of unusual keenness to arrive in the office before ten; my work as a junior included carrying coal along the corridor to feed the open hearth, which was all that we had for heating; and we wrote important policy messages to each other by hand with pen and ink, while typists made copies with carbon paper. In the department dealing with German affairs, where I got my first job at the bottom of the hierarchy in the so-called "third room", much of our work still involved the aftermath of the Second World War: property and compensation disputes, the imprisonment of Rudolf Heβ and the whole system of military occupation of Germany by the three Western powers and the Soviet Union. The atmosphere was tense and exciting, and we could feel that the issues we dealt with were among the most important of the day for Britain's own security. The Soviet blockade of Berlin was not far behind us, and we had still not negotiated the Quadripartite Agreement that brought some stability to the handling of day-to-day affairs in that isolated city.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137464729_14

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