Walking with lions: tales from a diplomatic past

Language: English
Pages: 223

About The Book

The story goes, apocryphal perhaps, that one day the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, told his foreign minister that the country’s name must be changed to Idi, and he should inform the UN and all other international bodies. A week passed. President Amin then summoned the minister and asked, ‘Did you carry out my orders?’ The shivering Minister replied there was a problem. ‘What problem?’ the president inquired. ‘Your Excellency, there is a country called Cyprus. The people are called Cypriots. If Uganda were to be called Idi, we would be called Idiots’.

There are few leaders that K. Natwar Singh, in a diplomatic career spanning more than three decades, has not known-and fewer still about whom he has no story to tell. In Walking With Lions: Tales from a Diplomatic Past, Singh puts together fifty episodes that entertain, inform and illuminate.

Featured here is Indira Gandhi as a statesman and mentor, alongside other renowned figures such as Fidel Castro, Haile Selassie and Zia-ul-Haq. The author analyses some personalities with disarming candour, among them Moraji Desai and Lord Mountbatten; at other times, his admiration for leaders like C. Rajagopalalchari and Nelson Mandela shines through. In these pages you will also find a rare, fascinating glimpse of godman Chandraswami and his interaction with a surprisingly submissive Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher. Besides there are short tributes to artists, writers, cricketers and film stars, like M.F. Hussain, Nadine Gordimer, Don Bradman and Dev Anand.

Recounted with empathy and humour, this collection of encounters is a warm, unaffected and reassuring reminder that the great too can be as fallible as the rest of us.