The closing of a chapter

IN his words, the last four years of being Britain's top diplomat in Singapore have "absolutely flown by". As Antony Phillipson prepares to head back home to the United Kingdom next week, he leaves knowing that he has done all he can to cement the long-standing historical ties and economic links between the two countries. "Busy" is the first word the affable British High Commissioner to Singapore thinks of when asked to reflect on his term in the Lion City.

Singapore and the United Kingdom celebrate 50 years of diplomatic relations in 2015, but Mr Phillipson is quick to note that there are "strong, deep and enduring" links that date back nearly 200 years. That was when Englishman Sir Stamford Raffles founded modern Singapore, then a sleepy fishing village, as a trading post for the East India Company in 1819.

"Before I first came to Singapore, I spent a lot of time talking to people in London and in businesses, to try and frame in my own mind what this job was all about," says the Johannesburg-born career civil servant. "This was, after all, not a blank sheet of paper that I was inheriting, but a very well-developed, very mature relationship between the United Kingdom and Singapore."