Julia Miles

28 years married to a British diplomat and experiencing the delights and horrors of life abroad led to my writing 'The Ambassador's Wife's Tale'. It is one thing to be an employee of the Foreign Office and quite another to be a semi-detached spouse, and I've given them some well-deserved pokes along the way.

Diplomatic life is not all champagne and canapes (thank goodness, as I spent hundreds of hours making them), but many families will encounter hostility or terrorism when abroad. We were evacuated from Libya in 1984. I, like all the other wives, was under house arrest but had to pack up in under a week, while the staff were confined to the Embassy office. The world's press arrived so I recruited some famous names to empty cupboards and take down pictures leading to lots of bizarre and funny moments against a background of unfathomable terror.

Afterwards, we were posted to Luxembourg-where we encountered more terror- and I commuted back and forth to Oxford Polytechnic to train as a social worker and eventually achieved my ambition to work as a probation officer after my husband retired.

Having retrained, I continue to work as a psychotherapist and to talk about my book on a regular basis. I must say I usually get a good reception, with the audience by turns falling off their chairs in laughter or groaning in sympathy at my plight.

I shall be speaking at the Lichfield Literary Festival on Thursday 12 July 2018 so hope to see you there.