Being British Ambassador to Bulgaria in the 70s

by John Cloake

John Cloake is a former British Ambassador to Bulgaria (1976-1980). When we invited him to contribute to the 100 Years UK in BG blog, he came back to us saying that he holds “many good memories of Bulgaria” and that has always thought that the British Ambassador’s Residence in Sofia was “the best house in the Balkans”.

The centenary of the diplomatic relations between the UK and Bulgaria was marked during John Cloake’s mission in Bulgaria. Unsurprisingly, he noted that the #100UKBG celebrations seemed very appropriate to him.

Along with Sofia, John Cloake’s diplomatic career includes missions in Baghdad, Saigon, New York, Moscow and Tehran, among others.

“We had a lunch at which I said something to the Admiral enquiring when they would be returning the visit and he turned quite purple. My Defence Attaché whispered: “He ain’t got a ship he can send!” – John Cloake, British Ambassador to Bulgaria, 1976-1980 

On Trade and Cultural Exchange

[During my time here] we didn’t have much to do with trade, let alone political influence, but we had the Secretary of State for Trade out on a visit once. I took him to call on Todor Zhivkov who said: “You do know that the Soviet Union is a colony of Bulgaria?” We said: “Do tell us.”, he said “Well, you see, they are a secure source of supply of all the raw materials we need and a captive market for all our manufacture, what could be more colonial than that?”. The moral being there was very little commercial cake to share out between our Western countries and there wasn’t much trade to be done there.

It became evident that the main thing to do was to put an emphasis on cultural relations. We had a proper agreement, which I helped to negotiate, on cultural exchanges. We put on a lot of exhibitions of Shakespeare, Turner, etc. We had concerts. And a big triumph, we had the Ballet Rambert. One of the great things about our house was that it had a very nice garden and it had a swimming pool which the staff could use and while the Ballet Rambert were there we invited them to come and use it all the time and we got to know them very well. They were a great success!

On Learning and Speaking Bulgarian

[My wife] Molli and I were trying to learn Bulgarian. Practically no other Western Ambassador even attempted the language, but we were there for nearly four years so we saw at least two generations, sometimes three, of other colleagues. Two of our American colleagues spoke Russian but the Bulgarians didn’t like people to speak Russian although it was practically the same language. But any good Bulgarian would tell you that Russian was just a modern variant of Slavonic which was the origin of the Bulgarian language. The fact that we actually made an effort and tried to speak to them in their own language was a big thing.

Every year Todor Zhivkov had a party for the Heads of Missions in a different provincial capital, take us off for a couple of days or so, overnight in a hotel with outings to various sites, useful factories, and always some country dancing. Todor Zhivkov always used to pick on Molli because not only did she dance well, but she could talk to him. So they got on awfully well.

The First British Naval Visit to Bulgaria

One of the things that was interesting and slightly curious was that we achieved for the first time a British Naval visit. This had been put forward, I’m not sure which side had started it, in the “spirit of Helsinki“.

It was quite obvious as preparations developed that the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was all in favour of it and the Bulgarian Ministry of Defence absolutely hated it, loathed it, but Foreign Affairs won out. Finally we had two frigates sitting in the Black Sea waiting to come in to port at Varna, where I had gone up to meet them. Even then the Bulgarian Navy kept them waiting about eight hours before letting them in just to show.

The visit went off quite well, there were no nasty incidents or anything. They had a football match where it was very obvious which team was which because our team had several black players on it. We had a lunch at which I said something to the Admiral enquiring when they would be returning the visit and he turned quite purple. My Defence Attaché whispered: “He ain’t got a ship he can send!”

This article is part of an extensive interview of John Cloake for British Diplomatic Service Oral History Project (BDOHP), a project run by Churchill College, Cambridge. The copyright to the article belongs to BDOHP. It has been published with BDOHP permission and John Cloake’s knowledge.