Secret letters disclose true views of British ambassadors

British ambassadors’ candid appraisals of their hosts – including “deceitful” Nicaraguans, promiscuous Thais and “second-rate” Brazilians – have been disclosed in a series of valedictory letters.

Previously classified documents in which retiring diplomats gave vent to their true feelings have exposed the cauldron of resentments, and dark humour, boiling beneath the dignified surface of international relations.

The valedictory dispatches traditionally sent by British envoys at the end of overseas postings were meant to give their Foreign Office bosses a frank summary of the state of affairs in the countries they were leaving.

But many mandarins exploited the cover of confidentiality to insert personal – and occasionally disparaging – observations about the locals.

Sir Anthony Rumbold, who served in Bangkok for two years until 1967, wrote in his missive that Thailand had “no literature, no painting” and “hideous” interior decoration.

“Nobody can deny that gambling and golf are the chief pleasures of the rich, and that licentiousness is the main pleasure of them all,” he added.

In the same year Roger Pinsent was even more damning about the population of the small Central American state of Nicaragua.

“There is, I fear, no question that the average Nicaraguan is one of the most dishonest, unreliable, violent and alcoholic of the Latin Americans,” he wrote.

Sir Michael Weir, the Middle East expert who ended his diplomatic career in Cairo in 1985, used his valedictory letter to express his deep affection for the Egyptian people.

But in an aside that must have raised smiles in Whitehall, he said that the values of the growing Egyptian middle class could best be understood through the enduring popularity of ITV’s Edwardian drama Upstairs, Downstairs.

“For the millions of adult Egyptians for whom the nightly episode had absolute priority, it represented a nostalgic evocation of a society that still flourished in their lifetime – though it disappeared in England half a century before,” he wrote.

Sir John Russell’s letter from Rio de Janeiro in 1969 described the country as “damn badly run”, with corruption so rampant that you can “buy anything from a driving licence to a High Court judge”.

Even while expressing his fondness for the Brazilian temperament and optimism about the country’s prospects, Sir John deployed generalisations that might be considered offensive in this more politically correct era.

“The Brazilians are still a tremendously second-rate people: but it is equally obvious that they are on their way to a first-rate future,” he wrote.

The documents, which were obtained from the National Archives and through Freedom of Information requests, will feature in a news BBC Radio 4 series Parting Shots, which begins on Tuesday.

The tradition of valedictory dispatches was suspended in 2006 when a missive from the retiring envoy in Rome Sir Ivor Roberts, criticising what he saw as the Foreign Office’s obsession with management, was leaked to the press.