An authoritative, entertaining and moving account of the courageous and unusual women who have been the backbone of the foreign service.

Accompanying their spouses in the most extraordinary, tough, sometimes terrifying circumstances, the women written about in this book struggled to bring their civilisation with them.

The book will be beautifully illustrated with archive material, extracts from original letters between the women and their families at home, maps to show the routes they travelled and the places they were posted to and pictures of ephemera to evoke the lives they led. The chapters included are:

Getting There
* The Posting
* Private Life
* Embassy Life
* Public Life
* Social Life