Invited Speakers

Ronald Higgins is an independent writer on global security issues. He has lectured world wide and, despite some controversial views, talks regularly at Britain's official Defence Academy.

He read economics, sociology and philosophy at the London School of Economics and taught at Oxford University before entering the British Diplomatic Service in 1954. His first main job was on the"Japan desk" in the Foreign Office.He then served in the British Embassy in Israel during and after the Suez Crisis, 1956-8 and then in Denmark. In 1960 he became an official (non-party political)Private Secretary to Edward Heath, in his 'Mr Europe' years.

In 1968 he joined the British Embassy in Indonesia and was sometimes acting Ambassador. This was during the so-called "Confrontation War" in Borneo.

In 1969 he left government service to join The Observer and in 1978 he published "The Seventh Enemy: the Human Factor in the Global Crisis" and make a BBC TV film about it. In 1990 he published "Plotting Peace: the Owl's Reply to Hawks and Doves" about the Cold War. He has twice before lectured in Japan and is an active member of various pressure groups concerned especially with Third World issues and questions about our individual and collective response to still growing global problems.

With his paediatrician wife, Dr. Elizabeth Bryan, who died in 2008, he also wrote a Penguin book about infertility treatments, which appeaed in Japanese as "The Elusive Child".