Eat, Drink and Be Wary: A New Zealand Diplomat Looks Back.

• Author: Subritzky, John
• Position: Book review

EAT, DRINK AND BE WARY: A New Zealand Diplomat Looks Back

Author: Jim Weir

Published by: Dunmore, Auckland, 2011, 220 pp, $34.99.

Jim Weir is a retired diplomat who, in the course of a 35-year career, served as New Zealand's head of mission in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Moscow and Rome. Eat, Drink and be Wary is his memoir of the people, places and events that featured in his long and distinguished career, excluding his stint as ambassador in the Soviet Union (which has been covered previously in his 1989 book Letters from Moscow). Weir had to be selective of course in what he wrote about, and has accordingly focused on areas which he believed would be of particular interest to the lay reader.

It started for Weir back in 1947. His 'orientation programme' consisted of being told to learn the United Nations Charter 'preferably by heart'. The charter was a personal priority of the minister (and also prime minister), Peter Fraser, who had played a significant part in its drafting at the founding conference of the UN in 1945. Pay packets were collected every Wednesday morning. Sixpence was deducted to send food parcels to the locally engaged (British) staff at the New Zealand High Commission in London.

The Department of External Affairs (as it was then called) 'divided the world in three, like Caesar's Gaul': Europe, Asia, and Antarctica/Oceania. There were only five diplomatic missions: London, Canberra, Washington, Moscow and New York. The department operated as economically as possible, and the staff determined that it would be as egalitarian as possible--no airs, graces or titles. New Zealand's diplomatic service would not be an antipodean imitation of the Foreign Office. Weir and his colleagues were even instructed not to describe themselves as diplomas ('civil servant' was the approved designation). One head of mission described himself as 'licensed drainlayer'.

Weir's first overseas assignment was to New York in 1949 as a third secretary ('the lowest form of diplomatic life'). New Zealand's consulate was located on the 60th floor of the Empire State Building. Weir recalled his wonderment at seeing so many well known world leaders and officials during his first UN General Assembly, only to be rebuked by his more senior colleague, Charles Craw: 'when you've been in the diplomatic game long enough, you'll realize that everybody else is mad'. The ambassador (and head of 'NZ inc' in the United States, to use more recent terminology) was the...