UNDIPLOMATIC LIVES

An (Un)diplomatic Lives is a perfectly fitting title for a memoir co-written by William and Lynn Montgomery. Full of dramatic events, major historical twists and individual human dramas, this book shows, among other things, that the life of a diplomat can often be decidedly undiplomatic: dangerous, unpredictable and merciless.

The story begins in the early seventies of the twentieth century and ends in the first decade of the twenty-first: in those thirty years, William and Lynn Montgomery traced their impressive life path on the world map: from Belgrade, through Moscow, Washington, Dar es Salaam, Sofia and Budapest, they described a full circle at the end of which Belgrade was found again. The complex geography of this story is only surpassed in its excitement by its history: the dramatic events on the great historical stage are, as a rule, even more dramatic in the world of high politics hidden behind the stage. Non-diplomatic life offers us many opportunities to look at that world from the inside, and to re-examine many of our knowledge, attitudes and beliefs – first and foremost, of course, in the part of the book that deals with the terrible historical upheavals in the Balkans, Yugoslavia and Serbia at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. About the challenges and temptations they faced then, as well as in many other moments of their rich diplomatic career, William and Lynn Montgomery write precisely, clearly and mercilessly honestly, with an emphasized responsibility above all to the truth. That truth is often uncomfortable, sometimes painful, but always sobering and healing. And that is just one of the reasons why the book Undiplomatic Lives is extremely valuable.