The British Consul

"Dickie begins with the appointment's early days of service with such trading houses as the Muscovy Company, the Levant Company, and the East India Company, and he concludes with the modern era, in which the Consul has had to face challenges ranging from the fallout of the package-holiday revolution and international protest rallies to overzealous sports fans and backpackers. Dickie recounts Mao Tse-tung's Red Guard attack on the British Legation in 1967, an event recalling the Boxers' siege almost seventy years earlier. He reveals how the Consuls coped with the traumatic experience of the use of British citizens as human shields by Saddam Hussein in 1990 and with the rescue of British hostages from the Moscow theater seized by Chechen rebels in 2002.".