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At a delicate time in regional politics, Her Majesty’s new Ambassador to the Kingdom of Bahrain, Roderick “Roddy” Drummond who is a veteran in the region, is set to take his new mantle and is looking forward to integrating into the diplomatic and social communities on the island.
Roddy, who moved to Bahrain in August with his wife Yasmin after completing leadership training in his homeland of Scotland, was in the kingdom more than six years ago while serving as the Deputy Head of Mission and Consul General to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
He sat down for an interview with GulfWeekly and said: “Bahrain has changed quite a bit in the last six or seven years. The pace of development is monumental and the kingdom continues to modernise. I am interested in seeing what kinds of cultural changes have accompanied its development.”
His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa received the Ambassador’s a few weeks ago, and since then, the diplomat, who has 34 years of global experience in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has been on a socialising streak, meeting government officials, setting up consular clinics and rounding up the press so he can hit the ground running.
Scotsman Roddy, who was born in Dundee and studied modern history at the University of Edinburgh and joined the Officer Training Corps where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. But young Roddy was an anthropologist at heart, adding: “I wanted to travel and get to know other cultures. Not just a historian from a library, but in a way that I would get to know and understand cultures intimately, reflect their views and understand their perspective while getting paid to do something I enjoy anyways.”
