Sir Ernest Satow (1843-1929) left the British Diplomatic Service in 1906, as Minister to China. He visited Japan on his way home to England in that year, but he was never to visit the Far East again. Indeed he only left Britain twice in his retirement: his last official and public appointment was as a delegate to the Second Peace Conference at the Hague in 1907; thereafter he and his younger brother Sam visited their cousin Lisinka in Blankenburg, Harz, Germany in 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War.

This presentation will attempt to answer the question posed with reference to Satow’s many diaries and letters held at the National Archives of the United Kingdom.