Peacemonger by Marrack Goulding

The brief biography on the cover of Peacemonger fails to mention that for two years, in the mid-Seventies, the author was my private secretary. The head of personnel at the Foreign Office recommended him with a qualified assurance. "Goulding", he said, "is the highest of high flyers, but he does not suffer fools gladly." I was still deciding if that was a comment about Goulding or me when he added: "He will either make it right to the top or cause so much offence that he leaves the Foreign Office."

It is a mark of Marrack Goulding's ability that he managed to fulfil both predictions. When he left me, he was seconded to the Cabinet Office think tank, where he helped produce a report which condemned the extravagance of the diplomatic service. His punishment was a posting to Lisbon as minister, squeezed between an ambassador and head of chancery who, unlike him, spoke Portuguese and "held traditional views about the foreign service".

He was rescued from exile by Britain's permanent representative to the United Nations, who took him to New York. After that, as part of the rehabilitation process, he became a full ambassador – to Angola. Twenty years later, he was happy to explain why he had enjoyed his time in Luanda. It was not an embassy which regularly entertained visiting salesmen. Talent in the end being irresistible, he moved on to be an Under-Secretary-General at the UN – the highest post in that organisation to which a citizen of the great powers can aspire.

For seven years, he was in charge of peacekeeping. But Peacemonger is more than an account of 13 major operations which took him from Yugoslavia to El Salvador to Palestine. It is a vindication of the Trevelyan principle of public-service recruitment. Even the most intractable problems benefit from the attention of a first-class mind – particularly if it is combined with a passionate commitment to a great cause.

Goulding's temperament obliged him to be dismissive about the "sermon on the moral worth of peacekeeping and peacekeepers" which he "preached" to the Nobel prize committee in Stockholm. But no one can doubt the sincerity with which he paid tribute to the soldiers who "risk their own lives rather than open fire on those between whom they have been sent to keep the peace". The paradox of his career is that a pathologically combative man became totally committed to peacekeeping.

At the beginning of the book, Goulding calmly announces that his style made him a UN misfit. "I would say, 'Secretary General, you must call the Secretary of State now', not 'Mr Secretary General, you might wish to consider calling the Secretary of State fairly soon'." He recounts his mistakes with a diplomat's insouciance. It is easy to understand why Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, "an aristocrat" not used to subordinates who thought it "normal to be direct", was unnerved by Goulding's instinctive confidence.

Goulding survived for so long because he did the job so well. His book makes clear that success was built on personal involvement in the operations he supervised. The head of UN peacekeeping spent his years in the field, not in New York. His "first foray" to Cyprus was eventful only because he "danced cheek to cheek with an Israeli air hostess". Goulding describes the thrill as more political than sexual: a reference to his years at the Arabic Language School in the Lebanon, where students were told "not even to utter the word Israel where they might be overheard".

After that, experiences ranged from near escapes from explosions and fire-fights to correcting the South African foreign minister's translation of one of Martial's epigrams. It is much to his credit that his happiest memory seems to be the warm embrace he received from an elderly unknown Arab who thought he might bring peace to the Middle East and end the misery of refugee camps. The picture which immortalises the incident does not suggest Goulding was enjoying the experience at the time that it occurred.

Peacemonger is an adventure story. It is also a textbook on an important aspect of world government – even to the point of describing the several sorts of peacekeeping in which the UN takes part. It is also a message of hope. There are some people who, despite their embarrassment at the thought, want to make the world a better place.

Roy Hattersley's 'A Brand from the Burning' will be published this autumn by Little, Brown