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Publisher Profile

Ian Proud

Ian Proud was Head of Political Section at the British Embassy in Bangkok when the Boxing Day tsunami struck in 2004. He was the first to leave the embassy with the Ambassador on a 900 km drive to the disaster zone and remained there initially for thirteen days before his first break. Following this he continued to work on disaster recovery in southern Thailand on a permanent basis through the months that followed. ‘As part of my diplomatic role in Thailand I found myself overseeing on-the-ground response to the 2004 tsunami. I didn’t have any training for something of that magnitude, it was unprecedented. The work was relentless, the pressure unlike anything I’d experienced, and the emotional toll brutal. The experience haunts me and I still have to grapple with the residual effects of PTSD. 'Searching is a novel that I needed to write for my own healing. Everyone who experienced the tsunami had a life before and after that tragic event. For most, I suspect, life after has been lesser in some way. But I wanted to create an old-fashioned love story about two people who loved each other so much that they had the strength to endure the very worst. 'Most of all, I wrote Searching to commemorate the victims of this terrible tragedy and to pay tribute to all those who did their bit to help in the most harrowing of circumstances.’ Ian Proud was a member of His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. During that time, he was one of the Foreign Office’s most accomplished crisis experts and was Chair of the Crisis Committee at the British Embassy in Moscow when the Salisbury nerve agent attack happened in March 2018. He posts international relations articles and podcasts from his Substack page, The Peacemonger.

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