Brigitte had offered to drive me to the airport since she wanted to do some shopping with Françoise at the IKEA department store in Roissy, only a few minutes from the airport.

Budget cuts at UNESCO send Jacques Dupont from Sri Lanka to India, where mistaken identity, Bollywood glamour, a women’s meeting in Bangalore, and a troublesome Kama Sutra gift turn one combined mission into comic chaos.

On D-Day, Nancy arrived. I took the day off from work and went to the airport with Brigitte and Françoise to fetch her. There was a lot of excitement in the air before the plane arrived. The three of us…

In this chapter from Around The World in Eighty Missions, Jacques Dupont travels to late Soviet Leningrad, where a UNESCO library mission becomes tangled with immigration confusion, spy stories, Russian hospitality, ballet, vodka, and family misadventure.

Chapter 14 of Around The World in Eighty Missions follows Jacques Dupont through Mexico City, a stolen purse, a lively dinner party, and Aunt Lily’s unforgettable Zapata souvenir.

My farewell party is the last and, therefore, the most recent event which took place during my life at UNESCO. And yet, it is a most foggy and confused recollection. The latter part of the evening is especially blurred, even…

UNESCO, like the United Nations, was born in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its constitution was ratified on the 4th of November 1946 by the twenty Founding Member States who signed the solemn declaration: ” Since wars begin…