26 August 2018
I am putting the finishing touches to a very short book called The Diplomacy of Ancient Greece. I completed a draft of this some years ago and dug it out again over the summer. My interest was re-kindled, so I consulted new sources and have refreshed and extended it. I hope to see it joining my much longer book on Grenville-Murray on the ISSUU platform before long. It’s such an important subject in the history of diplomacy and the only other systematic treatment – Adcock and Mosley’s Diplomacy in Ancient Greece – although still of great value, is over 40 years old, has a rather unwieldy structure, and is devoid of maps. It is treated quite fairly, I thought, in this review, even though the writer begins rather disconcertingly by saying that ‘It is impossible to write a book about diplomacy in ancient Greece, and probably a mistake to try.’ Well, that puts me on my mettle!
I hope to publish in the early winter, also on ISSUU, a book called Spooks and Diplomats: The uneasy relationship between diplomats and intelligence officers (working title). This is a vastly expanded version of the chapter on secret intelligence in my textbook and already well advanced. It explains, I’m afraid, why I have not given much attention recently to the updating page on that chapter on this site. I put the Spooks book on hold and switched to the Greek project largely because I wished to wait for the conclusion of the Mueller investigation into the charge that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election campaign, a subject to which I have given quite a lot of attention.