ABSTRACT
Geoffrey Denton began the New Year of 1985 with an official visit to North America. He spent three days in Canada (January 6-8) and four (January 9-12) in the United States. His aim was to revive, reassure and if possible rejuvenate the transatlantic Friends of Wilton Park. The American Friends were holding their Conference in Los Angeles under their new President, Professor Werner Hirsch. In London at the beginning of last August, Hirsch had confided that some US visitors to Wilton Park, ‘though they may have been splendid persons, came from universities no one had ever heard of. Many were also middle-aged or more, and worried by what they had heard of the new plans. As Nicholas Barrington told Denton on January 23, ‘For a time to come there will always be some who will regard any change in the Koeppler formula as a form of lèsemajestè.’ It was a general remark, but it applied especially to North Americans, who quite reasonably wondered whether the new short courses at Wilton Park really warranted a journey of several thousand miles. That argument-and a complaint about the FCO’s cutting the budget-appeared in the American Friends’ Newsletter in Spring, 1985.
