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When I joined the Foreign Office, I was astonished at the lack of formal preparation for the job. In those days, the Civil and Diplomatic Service entrance exams took place in three stages, by the end of which hundreds of unsuccessful candidates had been knocked out. Only a score or so survived the final stage to be admitted to the Foreign Office.

My induction course lasted about a month. Then, one morning, I was taken to the West and Central Africa Department, told that I would be responsible for French-speaking African countries plus Liberia. And that was that. I was now, at the tender age of twenty-two, a wet-behind-the-ears but fully functioning British diplomat.

I was put unsparingly to the test in my first month. I was summoned to the office of the Minister of State, a genial politician called George Thompson, who was about to receive an official visitor from the Central African Republic. I was there to interpret between English and French. The usual pleasantries of a courtesy call were easy enough to translate. But, just as I was beginning to relax, the official told Thompson that one of the main exports from his country was roselle. What on earth was roselle? With panic rising in my gorge, something made me blurt out “jute”. To my horror, there ensued a lively conversation in which Thompson said “jute” and the African minister said roselle.

After the meeting, I raced back to my office and looked in my dictionary. Roselle was not there. I tried out the mystery word on a French friend, but he had not heard of it either. But the next day, he called back. What was a British minister doing, he asked, talking to a politician from the Central African Republic about a plant that was used as a diuretic and food-colouring agent? My heart sank. I saw my career slipping beneath the waves before it had hardly begun. “Oh, and by the way,” he added, “it’s also used sometimes as a substitute for jute fibre — if that’s of any interest to you.”.

Christopher Meyer. Getting Our Way: 500 years of adventure and intrigue: the inside story of british diplomacy. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009, p. 7-9 (adapted ).

Considering the ideas and the vocabulary of text, decide whether the statements below are right or wrong.

It can be correctly inferred that, when it came to hiring, the Foreign Office had a clear preference for bright young people.