Diplomat without Portfolio

Weighing in at almost 600 pages is Diplomat without Portfolio : Valentine Chirol, His Life and ‘The Times’ by Linda Fritzinger. The book will be out in a few weeks, and to summarize the excerpts found at several publisher and book retail sites on the internet:

As Foreign Editor of The Times of London from 1899 until 1912, Valentine Chirol played a singular part in alerting people to the dangers facing them as war clouds gathered over a fast modernizing world. He analyzed wars from South Africa to the Balkans, and political eruptions from Peking to Constantinople. This was the man referred to by the Chancellor of Germany as one of the most dangerous enemies of the German Empire. In this wide-ranging biography, Linda Fritzinger paints a skilful portrait of a man at the centre of the greatest events of his period. Including new sources and extracts from Chirol’s writing, Diplomat without Portfolio is an accessible entry-point to an engaging vista of world history at the turn of the century.

Many congratulations to our learned colleague on the first full biography regarding his extraordinary career! (And many thanks to Ms. Fritzinger for writing the first biography of this oft-overlooked yet vital historical figure.)