‘No Power on Earth can Remove his Liability’: Emperor Haile Selassie and the Foreign Office, a Documentary Essay

Using the newly released unregistered files of the Foreign Office Permanent Under Secretary's Department (PUSD) Macklin's documentary article examines an interesting, if somewhat arcane, ‘missing dimension’ in the history of Abyssinian Emperor Ras Tafari Makonnen, more commonly known as Haile Selassie, and his covert financial relationship with the British government following his exile to Britain in 1936 after the conquest of his country by Mussolini's Fascists, until his return in 1941. By examining how the Foreign Office employed covert politics in order to obviate disruption to its ‘official’ diplomatic strategy Macklin examines how the British government set about ‘neutralising’ the Emperor's diplomatically awkward presence in England in their pursuit of rapprochement with Mussolini through which to drive a wedge between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.