So it wasn't a good beginning, and when we got to Sarajevo, about 10 miles outside the city, the whole of the back of the car went urgh, like that, and collapsed over the back wheel. And about an hour or two after that, the hooter started and wouldn't go off. it was the central arm-rest which had suddenly come away and its moorings had shot and flattened themselves against the window separating us from the driver. We hadn't gone, I suppose, more than 20 or 30 miles before there was a sort of ping and what appeared to be a pair of braces shot out from between our two shoulders, which was.

And it was, indeed, very splendid and after about a week or two, the Ambassador said, 'I must use this thing, I shall go on a trip to Croatia and John Julius, will you come with me as my interpreter?' So, the Ambassador and I got into the back of this car. And the Rolls-Royce arrived with a very smart, young man in a sort of old Etonian tie and a beautifully cut suit he'd driven it all the way out from London where it was delivered. The Ambassador's going to have a Rolls-Royce.' And Frank Roberts wrote saying, 'Don't do anything of the kind, the Yugoslav roads are absolutely terrible, it won't last well, people have never seen a Rolls-Royce here, they don't expect Rolls-Royces, you know, give me something sort of strong, you know, a glorified Land Rover or something is what we need here, no Rolls-Royces.' But they insisted and the embassy driver was sent to Coventry for three weeks to learn how to drive Rolls-Royces. I remember the Foreign Office wrote, it must have been, I suppose, around Christmas 1956, the Foreign Office wrote to the Ambassador saying, 'We've upgraded Belgrade to be a Rolls-Royce post.

I took the Ambassador around some monasteries just before we left. the Serbian Church was quite important, we had to keep up with it, go and talk to bishops and things like that, monasteries.

And I was sort of calling on people, you know, and then the Church was. I mean, in my case, I'd say for the first six months it was largely writing up reports on all my travels, which had been extensive, you know, to Macedonia, to Bosnia, to Herzegovina, to Slovenia, Montenegro, all very different, all semi-independent with their own parliaments. Well, the normal work, actually, was very, very interesting.

The popes by john julius norwich