Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse - Softcover

Brigid Keenan has worked on Nova, edited sections of the Sunday Times and contributed a regular column to Punch and Sainsbury's Magazine. The author of four previous books, she is married to the EU's man in Brussels.

A must read―Living Abroad Magazine

'Perfect tone ... surprising, astute, brilliantly observed and very human'―Ahdaf Soueif, The Guardian

'Glorious'―Publishing News

'Deliciously effervescent.'―Times

Light-hearted and eminently readable . . . a vivacious and engaging dialogue with the reader . . . She brings to life her experiences by painting vivid images―Music Week

Life is what you make of it -- you can't just sit there and let it happen to you -- you've got to grab opportunities with both hands, or you risk boredom at least, depression and deathbed regrets at worst. Women have not been raised to understand the importance of this. Brigid Keenan rams the message home with hilarity. This is an important book, written by a very funny writer.―Shirley Conran

It's the funniest thing I've read since Jilly Cooper stopped writing properly and turned to sex and four-letter words.―Mary S Lovell, author of The Mitford Girls

The story sparkles, flies, delights. You love Keenan, the weepy, flighty, funny bit of diplomatic baggage but a part of your heart goes out to AW, her partner, who puts up and shuts up. But what makes this book special is how with a light touch Keenan exposes the dark corners, the frustrations, the dilemmas of those who go forth to represent their country. The grand houses and lifestyles hide so much, silence so many. But not Bridget Keenan.―Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

With a glorious sense of the ridiculous, she depicts herself as a hyperventilating hysteric, who sobs her doom-ridden fantasies into reality.―The Spectator

What fun! Brigid Keenan, has written these anecdotal memoirs with a seasoning of undiplomatic mischief that is beguiling and unexpected in the wife of a peripatetic diplomat. Even in postings as remote and unlikely as Kazakhastan, or as bland and unpromising as Belgium, Keenan is incapable of boredom and therefore, she cannot be boring. Particularly, her delight in the antiquities of the Middle East and the old city of Damascus is knowledgeable and infectious. She is the person you hope will be seated next to you at a dinner party: a companion of experience, vivacity and charm. To read her book is to meet her and to meet her is to be enthralled.―Irma Kurtz, Cosmopolitan agony aunt