A Diplomat's Day

A Diplomat's Day is the personal account of the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1976 as seen through the eyes of the British Charge d'Affaires, Geoffrey Hancock. He draws on official documents and telegrams, diaries, media reports and other published memoirs to tell this sometimes chilling story of the disintegration of civil society as people around him fall victim to assassination and abduction. The book relates the tragic events leading up to and following the assassination of Francis Meloy (US Ambassador to the failed State of Lebanon), Robert Waring (his Economic Counsellor) and their driver, Zuhair al-Moghrabi, by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Geoffrey worked at the British Embassy in Lebanon during the war, establishing for himself a unique presence in the war torn streets of Beirut. 'To succeed in this game of survival it was necessary to become a player,' he writes, and he describes how he went about this task in the volatile militia territories of Beirut and its surrounding villages.
He established close relationships with the leaders of various factions, gaining access to valuable information which he passed on to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. He tells how the skeleton embassy staff remaining in the beleaguered city came, ironically, to depend for their security on the goodwill of Fatah, the Palestinian group established by Yasser Arafat.