"It's hardly a diplomatic secret that Boris Johnson is a liar": Sylvie Bermann on life as a diplomat
Goodbye Britannia. “It’s hardly a diplomatic secret,” she said coolly, speaking on Zoom from her apartment in Paris. It is also not the kind of thing a diplomat can say in public, but Bermann, 67, reached the French foreign ministry’s mandatory retirement age in 2020, and though she was reluctant to give up a job she loved, she is at last “free” to say whatever she likes. Her book portrays Johnson – jovial, charming, megalomanic – as lending a veneer of acceptability to a campaign driven mostly by xenophobia, and describes Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason in a count...