A frank and honest memoir by Britain's former ambassador to Kabul which provides a unique, high-level insight into Western policy in Afghanistan. The West's mission in Afghanistan has never been far from the headlines. For Sherard Cowper-Coles, our former Ambassador, Britain's role in the conflict - the vast amount of money being spent and the huge number of lives being lost - was an everyday reality. In Cables from Kabul, Cowper-Coles takes the reader on a journey through the backstreets of Afghanistan's capital to the corridors of power in London and Washington. He pays tribute to the tactical successes of our soldiers but asks whether these will be enough to secure stability. Nobody is better placed to tell this story of embassy life in one of the most dangerous places on earth. Powerful and astonishingly frank, Cables from Kabul explains how we got into the quagmire of Afghanistan, and how we can get out of it.

In this entertaining and engaging memoir, former ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles lifts the lid on embassy life throughout the world. In 1977 fresh-faced Oxford graduate Sherard Cowper-Coles entered the hallowed portals of the Foreign Office. Over the next thirty years he was invariably to be found at the frontline of international diplomacy, either striding the corridors of power at Westminster or jetting from one exotic location to the next. His tasks ranged from the challenging to the bizarre - from speech writing for Margaret Thatcher (who scrawled an emphatic 'NO!' over his first effort), to hiding an embarrassing bobble hat from Robin Cook . With recollections from the last three decades in international politics, taking us right up to Cowper-Coles's posting to Afghanistan, 'Ever the Diplomat' is a revealing and witty account of a unique period in our history. Cowper-Coles reveals what went on behind-the-scenes of Whitehall as we encounter a swindler impersonating Liberian President Charles Taylor, the young, idealistic leader of Syria Bashar al-Assad and Tony Blair in his boxer shorts.