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Brigid Keenan

Brigid Keenan is a British journalist and best-selling author of "Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse" and six other nonfiction books. Through her husband's work as a European Union diplomat, she has lived in Ethiopia, Brussels, Trinidad, Barbados, India, West Africa, Syria and Central Asia.

Diplomatic Baggage: Still On Trend
Book ClubExpat Experiences

Diplomatic Baggage: Still On Trend

by Brigid Keenan
written by Brigid Keenan

I am walking on air! My book Diplomatic Baggage, first published in 2005 about my adventures as a trailing spouse to my E.U. diplomat husband AW, has been bought by Bloomsbury and released again with a fancy – you could almost say sexy – new cover!

A big thank you to Alexandra Pringle, who published my last two memoirs (Packing Up: Further Adventures of a Trailing Spouse and Full Marks for Trying: An Unlikely Journey from the Raj to the Rag Trade) and decided to make it a trilogy with Dip Bag.

I made so many friends all around the world during the years described in the book, and then through hearing from its readers (including Nicole, the creator of this very blog)! When I wrote Dip Bag, I don’t think I appreciated quite how many of us trailing spouses there were because I was mainly thinking of dip wives like myself and not the hundreds — thousands — whose partners work abroad for other reasons. I now realize that I am part of a real global family.

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Locked Down? C’est La Vie
Book ClubExpat Experiences

Locked Down? C’est La Vie

by Brigid Keenan
written by Brigid Keenan

Brigid Keenan, British author of the best-selling Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse, accompanied her diplomat husband around the world for nearly 40 years — which, she says, turned out to be good practice for being locked down while far from home.

On February 26 — about a hundred years ago, or was it in another life? — my husband “AW” and I put our car on a cross-channel ferry and drove through France to a place called Elche, in Spain. We chose this destination, an extraordinary oasis probably planted by the Carthaginians, because AW is writing a book about date palms. Afterwards, we headed back north into France, to our little house in a village not far from Montpellier.

We had planned to stay about a week: sort out the small garden, clean the rooms, get it ready for summer and then leave. AW was booked on a Buddhist retreat in Scotland; I had to concentrate on the monthly column I write for The Oldie magazine.  (I was looking forward to interviewing actress Sarah Miles, the long-ago star of “Ryan’s Daughter” and a rumored sequel in which she will play a grandmother.) But Fate had other ideas: within a few days of our arrival, the whole world turned upside down, with all travel, commitments, appointments and engagements abandoned.

Almost two months later, we are still here — locked down, with one change of clothes each — in our French valley.

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