Dunedin-born Gerald McGhie served for 40 years as a diplomat for New Zealand, including two postings in Moscow - during Brezhnev and the Cold War years, and later during the fall of Gorbachev, the rise of Yeltsin and collapse of the Soviet Union. He has also been posted to Western Samoa, New York, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, and Tonga over his long and eventful career. McGhie has just produced an insightful account of 40 years of service as a NZ diplomat, called Balancing Acts: Reflections of a New Zealand Diplomat, in which, he says, he attempted to answer the question "what do diplomats do?" Retired in 2003, McGhie speaks and writes frequently on his experiences as well as on today's geopolitical environment.