You are cordially invited to Drinks
at Henley Hall, near Ludlow 6 - 8 pm by kind invitation of Captain and Mrs Michael Lumsden
Guest speaker - Sir Sherard Cowper Coles KCMG LVO
£15pp includes all drinks and canapés
To save on costs no actual tickets will be issued
No raffle
Prior booking essential - To book your place please call Sara Chance on 01584 877 506 or send a cheque made out to "Bitterley Branch, LCCA" to Mrs HCH Chance, Middleton Court, Middleton, Ludlow, Shropshire SY8 2DZ. Be sure to include details of your name and a contact telephone number. We are also able to accept payment by PayPal - please ring for details.
Henley Hall is two minutes off the A49 at Ludlow, on the A4117 road towards Clee Hill and Kidderminster. For SatNav users the postcode for Henley Hall is SY8 3HD
Following the tremendous success of the visit by Rory Stewart MP last year we are very proud to welcome Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles to Ludlow. Rory and Sir Sherard are the two foremost experts on modern Afghanistan alive in Britain today and have often appeared together on the same platform.
Sir Sherard served as the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from February 2009 until September 2010. He was British Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2007 until February 2009 and returned to Kabul as Chargé d’Affaires in the spring of 2010. Before that he served as British Ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2003, for which he learnt to speak and read basic Hebrew, and then British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2003 to 2007.
Sir Sherard’s earlier overseas postings included political jobs in the British Embassies in Washington and Paris. In between he worked in London as a Foreign Office speech-writer, as Private Secretary to the Permanent Under-Secretary, and on European security after the end of the Cold War. He was Head of the Foreign Office Hong Kong Department for over three years leading up to the handover of the Territory in 1997. In 1999-2001, he worked as Principal Private Secretary to the then British Foreign Secretary, the late Robin Cook MP.
He joined the Diplomatic Service immediately after studying Greek, Latin, philosophy and ancient history at Hertford College, Oxford, where is an Honorary Fellow. As well as being fluent in French he spent nearly two years learning Arabic before his first posting, to the British Embassy in Cairo and acquired basic Pashto for his posting to Kabul.
After taking Early Retirement from the Diplomatic Service in October 2010 he became the Business Development Director (International) at BAE Systems plc in February 2011. He has also been working on a book about Afghanistan, and another of diplomatic anecdotes.
Sherard Cowper-Coles has a truly international reputation and we are very honoured to have him at Henley