Hugh Philpott

Author of memoir and cultural writing shaped by music, diplomacy, and place

The Singing Ambassador

I write about my life as a diplomat through the lens of my love of music, people and the colourful texture of everyday life. Travel with me from the chalk of the South Downs to the granite of the Roof of the World and beyond — from Sussex coast to Central Asia.

The Singing Ambassador – A Tajik Story is a lived account of my time as a British ambassador, where song, culture, and human connection often mattered as much as politics.

‘Listen to the reed (flute), how it tells a tale,
complaining of separations:—
Saying, ‘Ever since I was parted from the reed-bed,
my lament hath caused man and woman to moan.’

(Taken from the opening of the Masnavi by Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī Translation by R.A. Nicholson, Book I, lines 1–4, Cambridge University Press, 1926)