A former colleague during Turner\u2019s time in May\u2019s No. 10 said the ambassadorial pick is \u201cone of those just incredibly accomplished people who\u00a0seems to achieve\u00a0difficult things\u00a0really quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he became ambassador to Pakistan, he learned Urdu in about three months, and went from, as far as I know, no\u00a0knowledge of the language whatsoever, to being able to have detailed conversations about the future of the Pakistani cricket team,\u201d they said. The same former colleague described Turner as\u00a0\u201creally effective\u201d while also being a good colleague \u2014 two qualities which few senior figures\u00a0possess\u00a0at the same time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Peter Ricketts, former national security adviser and head of the diplomatic service, said Turner had been \u201cat the\u00a0center\u00a0of the policymaking action in the FCDO over the last three years of constant crisis,\u00a0and is\u00a0always calm, focused and constructive.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ciaran Martin, a colleague of Turner from the\u00a0Blatvanik\u00a0School of Government, said the pick was \u201cequally at home at the\u00a0center\u00a0of government as he is heading a mission in a difficult environment.\u00a0He\u2019s\u00a0a\u00a0first-rate\u00a0problem solver. He might appear as a traditional civil service\u00a0type but he has a very dry, almost wicked sense of\u00a0humor.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Turner made TV documentaries before joining\u00a0government\u00a0in the 1990s.\u00a0It appears he\u00a0continued to dabble. The name Christian Turner is credited \u201cwith thanks\u201d in\u00a0the\u00a02013 series \u201cAmbassadors,\u201d which starred British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb as diplomats in the fictional Central Asian Republic of\u00a0Tazbekistan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A second person who has worked with Turner hailed an \u201cintense intelligence and calculation behind anything he says or does,\u201d as well as an aptitude for \u201csomething painfully lacking in Whitehall, and that is speed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former colleague during Turner\u2019s time in May\u2019s No. 10 said the ambassadorial pick is \u201cone of those…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,29,5293,32,393,4884,6657,1144,28300,332,712,811,1201,16,657,15,49,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-640899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-career","11":"tag-diplomacy","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-migration","16":"tag-northern-ireland","17":"tag-peter-mandelson","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-scotland","20":"tag-security","21":"tag-trade","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-ukraine","24":"tag-united-kingdom","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115742426130571037","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}