Master of None

A remarkable family memoir spanning diplomacy, public service, travel and a lifetime lived through extraordinary change.

In Master of None, Jeremy Richard Lovering Grosvenor Varcoe, CMG, looks back on a life whose sheer variety belies the characteristically modest title of his memoir.

Beginning with his Cornish ancestry and childhood, Varcoe traces the people, places and circumstances that shaped him before following a path that would take him through Charterhouse, National Service and Oxford, to Swaziland and eventually into a diplomatic career. Along the way came different occupations, countries and experiences, set against decades of profound political, social and technological transformation.

Varcoe describes his diplomatic contribution modestly as being confined largely to the “footnotes to history”, yet his career placed him close enough to significant events to offer a fascinating personal perspective on the people and circumstances surrounding them. The result is not simply the story of a diplomat, but the record of a man whose professional and private lives repeatedly brought him into contact with a changing Britain and a changing world.

Family remains at the heart of the book. Varcoe explores generations of his Cornish forebears alongside marriage, relationships, loss and the people who accompanied him through an exceptionally varied life. His family connections themselves form part of the story, extending through several notable British families and figures.

Warm, candid and frequently self-deprecating, Master of None combines family history, diplomatic memoir, British social history and personal recollection. Its title comes from Varcoe's own play on the Cornish expression “Cousin Jack”: after so many occupations and experiences, he considers “Cousin Jack of all trades, master of none” an appropriately Cornish description of himself.It is an absorbing account of one man's journey through much of the twentieth century - and a personal window onto the families, institutions, countries and events that helped shape it.