Inside the Foreign Office

How can the UK maintain its influence on the world stage - and in doing so protect the UK’s security? Filmed during Boris Johnson’s tenure as Foreign Secretary, we meet Sir Simon Macdonald (pictured), the Permanent Under-Secretary and chief civil servant at The Foreign Office. As politicians come and go, civil servants remain. In this first film, we follow the diplomats as they wrestle with a series of crises and challenges covering Burma to Russia. Michael Waldman gains access to the United Nations in New York, as world leaders gather for the special General Assembly week.

In this second episode we join the Europe Director Caroline Wilson with Boris Johnson on their whistlestop tour from RAF Northolt to Lisbon and Paris. As diplomats prepare for the post-Brexit world, film-maker Michael Waldman eavesdrops on Foreign Office discussions around the globe: in Whitehall, in far-flung embassies in Nigeria and Mongolia, and even on the former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s private plane, as he switches from speaking English to French. We also examine how important trade with Commonwealth countries will become, and visit Lagos, where the traditional Queen’s Birthday Party proves an opportunity for Foreign Office staff to make connections with the vibrant characters in Nigerian business.

The way most Britons come into contact with the Foreign Office is when they get into trouble overseas. This film follows three diplomats as they try to aid Brits who unexpectedly find themselves in serious trouble on the other side of the world. Ten young backpackers are thrown into a squalid, overcrowded jail in Cambodia facing pornography charges they all deny; an elderly couple haven’t been heard from since their house was destroyed by the most powerful hurricane ever to hit the Caribbean; and a young girl in Iraq, about to be forced into marrying her first cousin, wants to escape back to the UK. In this final episode we meet Sophie Lott, a former probation officer who used to work with perpetrators of honour-based violence in east London. Now at the Foreign Office’s specialist Forced Marriage Unit, she works to help victims.