Book review: Packing Up by Brigid Keenan
Leslie Geddes-Brown discovers a cracking book full of anecdotes from ‘trailing spouse’ Brigid Keenan


** Buy Packing Up by Bridgid Keenan at the Country Life Bookshop
A friend of the author once wondered whether, instead of being an EU ambassador and his ‘trailing spouse’, she and her husband actually lived quietly in Bournemouth, coming occasionally to London to regale others with outlandish, invented stories. Sometimes, reading this book, I, too, began to wonder whether it was all made up. Diplomatic Baggage, her previous hilarious memoir of travels with the ambassador, had a similar effect. Certainly, Brigid Keenan has experienced more unlikely accidents than most of us. There’s the moment she tries to order a taxi in Sri Lanka to go Christmas shopping and the hotel receptionist thinks she wants an elephant; there’s the email she sends to daughter Claudia, ‘My darling little fat baby…’, which goes to famed cookery writer Claudia Roden instead.
And, in Uzbekistan, police have to quell a riot after she tries to buy embroidery at a market stall. A former fashion editor of The Sunday Times, Miss Keenan clearly wanted to be a newshound. The Sunday Times didn’t encourage this, but, trailing her ambassador husband around the world, news stories flared up around her. The foreign editor should have listened. She was asked if President al-Assad of Syria should hire a PR. ‘The President didn’t need a PR, he needed to make serious, basic reforms in his country,’ she replied with considerable foresight.
There are even fiercer moments. She hates Israel for what it’s doing to the Palestinians (‘the deliberate humbling of a people’) and is outraged when her husband retires after 35 years as an ambassador with the EU and nobody from that over-stuffed bureaucracy has the manners to thank him.
This book is a delight, with snoring and the washing machine treated in the same way as corruption in Europe. She is frank and self-deprecating, describing her career as going from young meteor to fallen star. And heavens, she makes you laugh.
* This article was first published in Country Life magazine on August 13 2014
* Follow Country Life on Twitter
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
-
A Hampshire Manor for sale that dates back to the days of Alfred the Great, with the most beautiful staircase we've seen in years
The ten bedroom property features an indoor swimming pool, jacuzzi, spa complex and stables, and it was restored by the same architect who worked on Downing Street.
-
'Champagne is not simply a place, it’s a symbol of excellence': How a quiet rural region shrugged off war, famine and pestilence to become the home of the ultimate luxury tipple
Ten years ago today the French region was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but what did it take for Champagne to be listed and what’s changed for the area since then?