WHY do we need ambassadors? One of the perks of this variegated job of

mine is that occasionally I get asked inside a British embassy and am

even permitted, well below the salt, to dine there.

Some of our ambassadors are very nice, quite human really, others are

very grand indeed and their wives worse. But in this day and age of the

telephone, the fax machine, the satellite dish and the computer, do we

really need nobs on the spot living in a style only Betty Britain, or

perhaps Madonna, are accustomed to just because they are the Queen's

representative on earth and the natives must be kept in their place?

Often they are little more than terribly grand hoteliers, there to

entertain visiting royals, Cabinet Ministers, party leaders, and barons

of industry in the manner to which they are accustomed and to give

parties for the local great and good and other opinion formers in a

manner to which they are not accustomed, thus impressing them.

There are those in Whitehall who think ambassadors and embassies have

had their day and, while the Foreign Office loves to stress the job its

chaps do promoting Britain's trade, that it is one which could be done

more cheaply by a Department of Trade and Industry rep sent as required.

Sir Nicholas Henderson is one of the great ambassadors of this

century, and, should anyone wonder why we need them, who better to

demonstrate the case for allowing the species to survive? His diaries

give an engrossing account of life as Our Man Over There. Uniquely he

has held the three great embassies -- Bonn, Paris, and Washington,

getting the last after he had officially retired at the age of 60.

They have only just appeared because the Foreign Office refused him

permission to publish in 1989, the section dealing with the Falklands

war being considered too sensitive. Maybe so, but Lady Thatcher has

since put her view of events, as have others, and he decided to publish

and be damned.

Whatever else happens he will not be damned, because they are a

diverting read. Take this tale of how Mrs Thatcher in December, 1977,

held talks with the French Prime Minister, Raymond Barre, which covered

inflation and unemployment, subjects on which they saw eye to eye.

Henderson records Barre did most of the talking, all in excellent

English.

Then the conversation turned to nuclear reactors. Barre appeared taken

aback when Mrs Thatcher, looking her most feminine in a pale blue suit,

those legs, which that other diarist, the Laird of Saltwood, so admires,

neatly crossed, suddenly looked at him intensely and asked -- ''Mr

Barre, what do you think of fast breeders?''

He paints a sad picture of the aged Duchess of Windsor, mute and half

paralysed in her Paris mansion -- taking tea was an obligatory part of

the ambassador's duties -- and a devastating one of Tessa Blackstone,

who descended on the embassy with a Whitehall cost-cutting team.

There are fascinating accounts of how to plan an embassy dinner.

Placement is vital because offence can be given, and he reproduces the

plans of those he regards as his triumphs. He also makes the point,

interesting when you think about it, that when it comes to getting to

know the leaders of other countries it is the wives who do it best

because they get landed next to them at dinner. Behind every great man

there is a good woman, and behind Sir Nicholas was Lady Henderson,

clearly a whiz at giving parties, arranging flowers and getting to know

people.

He is also fascinating on how the great meet the great. They may have

agreed to do so, but that is not the end of the matter. Innumerable

Jobsworths have to be placated or fixed -- or the twain will not meet.

Fixing and placating is the ambassador's job.

When the Hendersons left Washington Ron and Nancy invited them to

dinner at the White House. Sir Nicholas merrily bites the hand that fed.

''Reagan at our parting was his quintessential, friendly, joking,

smiling self; not exactly impersonal, but like one of those one-way

see-through mirrors: he could look at us but there was no way in which

we could peer back at him. He was forthcoming, but non-committal; and

how indeed could he be anything else after all those years of meeting so

many people? I think that he has a great gift in appearing to be, and in

fact being, so friendly, so universally friendly, without this involving

him in any expenditure of effort or sentiment. He is a difficult man to

oppose because you cannot hold anything against him personally. He is

without cynicism or malice.''

For a verdict like that alone the diaries are worth their weight in

gold, and 493 pages weigh a lot.

One final tale. In July, 1981, he attended a fancy dress gala in

Anchorage to celebrate the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana

Spencer. Pressed to make a thankyou speech he obliged, and, after

promising to report to the Prince himself on the horrendous affair,

added that he was sure ''HRH would read my report with interest on his

honeymoon, provided that he had no other more pressing things to do''.

Would that I had sat below the salt at one of his tables.

* Mandarin: The Diaries of an Ambassador 1969-1982 by Nicholas

Henderson, #20: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.