Off to the German Embassy for a farewell party to say auf wiedersehen to Michael Pfluegger, the popular outgoing press secretary who is returning to Berlin, and to welcome as his successor ‒the lovely Michaela Spaeth, who has just spent a year studying at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Pfluegger tells me his three years were a success: “When I arrived there were people like Simon Heffer writing about why it was right to bomb the Germans, but now the tide has turned and there are so many positive things being said and written about Germany. But I had no idea that Heffer was so young with these old-fashioned views of his.”