When I walk up the stairs to my office in the Embassy I pass a series of painted portraits and photographs of former heads of the UK’s diplomatic mission in Belgrade.
Over the years our diplomatic mission has had different names and a different status. It has been a Legation, a Consulate General and, as now, a British Embassy.
We are of now the UK Embassy to the Republic of Serbia. But my predecessors were accredited at different times to Serbia, the Kingdom of Serbia, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, and Serbia and Montenegro.
The portraits start with George Hodges who arrived by boat across the Danube in 1837. They continue, with some gaps, up to my predecessor Denis Keefe who left Belgrade last year.
There is one very obvious difference between me and all the diplomats in the portraits: they are all men.