A return to magnificence for British diplomats? [ May 17th, 2009 ] Posted in » Politics
The ceilings and floors of the grand white stucco building may have collapsed, the chancery building gutted by fire and the ambassador’s swimming pool hidden under a tangle of shrubs, but even in its current state of decrepitude the old British embassy in Kabul remains one of the city’s most magnificent buildings.
Totally abandoned save for a pair of Afghan policemen to keep out trespassers, the ruin is still clearly what Lord Curzon, the then Foreign Secretary who commissioned it in 1919, intended it to be – the finest embassy in Asia.