A Chief of Protocol explains the rules of diplomatic ceremony
James W. Symington, who served in the Johnson administration and later represented Missouri in Congress, describes diplomatic customs and the problems of hosting visiting officials.
The story
Diplomacy has a ceremonial side, and someone has to run it. James W. Symington did, as the United States Chief of Protocol, and The Stately Game is his memoir of the work: the customs that govern how nations deal with one another in person, the formal occasions at which they meet, and the practical problems of looking after officials visiting from many different countries.
Most people picture diplomacy as talks and treaties. Symington’s subject is the courtesy and ceremony that surround them, the part of the job that has to go right before anything else can. The title calls it a game, and he writes as someone who had played it.
This copy is a first printing from the Macmillan Company, in red cloth under a dark, glossy pictorial jacket with moderate rubbing and some wear at the edges. The person Symington inscribed it to has not yet been identified with certainty.
Details
- Date
- 1971
- Publisher
- The Macmillan Company, New York
- Edition
- First printing
- Binding
- cloth
- Condition
- Red cloth under dark, glossy publisher's dust jacket with moderate surface rubbing and some edge wear. Author's inscription in blue ink on a front endpaper. Contents sampled, no collational claim.
- Presentation note
- To [Sigurd?] / Love and / with admiration / from the player / Jim Symington
