The art of diplomacy has long been enhanced by art itself. A tradition ennobled by a long and distinguished association with art, the history goes deep, and serves as quite a colourful backdrop to what takes place in embassies and high commissions today.
It is an intriguing, symbiotic association and it is significant that art benefitted and continues to benefit from this as much as diplomacy, making both richer today from the long and ancient connection. A glance into antiquity will recall how Sir Thomas Wyatt, Ambassador to Rome in the service of Henry VIII, pursuing his own interests as a poet, performed a service to literature as great and enduring as his achievements for king and country. In the early sixteenth century, he took from Italy, the sonnet and its fantastic courtly love tradition to the English language and consciousness. Our literary knowledge today is richer for it.
