Radical Mandarin

In the golden age of Canadian diplomacy, during the government of Louis St Laurent and Lester Pearson, Escott Reid played a central role. In this memoir, he recalls some of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century and his own and Canada’s role in them.

ESCOTT REID is the author of a number of books, among them Time of Fear and Hope: The Making of the North Atlantic treaty, 1947-49; Hungary and Suez; Envoy to Nehru; and On Duty: A Canadian at the Making of the United Nations, 1945-46. In 1971, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. He lives on his farm in Ste Cecile de Masham, Quebec.

‘This is a wonderfully lucid, extraordinarily detailed account of the exceptionally useful life of an exceptionally and sometimes inconveniently independent public man. Its lessons on foreign policy, including its account of some elegantly institutionalized stupidities, are important for Canadians, and even more, I think, for Americans.’