Diplomatic Baggage: Adventures of a Trailing Spouse

A touching, hilarious, and often outrageous memoir of home-making and family adventures in the world's farthest outposts, written by Sunday Times fashion journalist Brigid Keenan.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 04 August 2022
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

The beloved Sunday Times bestseller, a touching, hilarious, often outrageous memoir of home-making and family adventures in the world's furthest outposts, is a complete treat to be in Keenan's witty and open-hearted company. Esther Freud describes it as "hilarious, and utterly beguiling," while Brigid writes like a dream. Joanna Lumley calls it "irresistible," and the Mail on Sunday praises it as "deliciously effervescent."

When Sunday Times fashion journalist Brigid Keenan married the love of her life in the late Sixties, she had little idea of the rollercoaster journey they would make around the world together. For he was a diplomat, and Brigid found herself the smiling face of the European Union in locales ranging from Kazakhstan to Trinidad, and asking herself questions she never thought she'd have to ask. How do you throw a buffet dinner during a public mourning period in Syria? Where do you track down dog fat in Almaty? And how do you entertain guests in a Nepalese chicken shed?

Negotiating diplomatic protocol, difficult teenagers, homesickness, frustrated career aspirations, witch doctors, and giant jumping spiders, Brigid muddles determinedly through—with no shortage of mishaps on the way. There are not many books that have actually made me cry from laughing, but this is one of them.

Weight: 226g
Dimension: 129 x 197 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781526654915