BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. I'm Anne McElvoy and this is the Arts and Ideas podcast. Diplomacy is our theme this evening in a turbulent world as countries strut and fret on a changeable international stage. On the home front, across generations where we step carefully through conversations that can make or break weekend gatherings. And right now, with diplomacy, driving plots we relish in TV drama, from the glitz of The Diplomat season two to the deathly plots at the Tudor court, from the pen of the late Hilary Mantel, of course. A diplomat, according to Sir Henry Wooten, a 16th century emissary, is an honest man sent to lie abroad for his country. It was probably an unintentional pun back then, to lie meant to be stationed abroad, but the pun is better remembered. From the recent COP summit in Baku, where only last week I watched entourages pursuing climate diplomacy, to the heights of the Davos meeting in the new year and the embassies in DC figuring out how to approach a second Trump era, diplomacy is part of the political and economic present but with roots and rituals deep in the past for us to explore. So let me introduce my guests and as I do I wanted to just spend a bit of time with each of you thinking about where you use diplomacy in your own lives successfully or not. Let's start with Bronwyn Maddox, who heads the Institute of Government and was editor of Prospect magazine and foreign editor of The Times and now director and chief executive of the foreign policy think tank Chatham House. Bronwyn, diplomat or opposite? I'm thinking back to a moment with George

W.