August 4, 1972, was a quiet day for British diplomatic correspondents attending their daily briefing at the Foreign Office in London. There wasn’t much to report. It was late afternoon and some of the journalists had left the building but a few stragglers were summoned back by diplomats in the news department to be told that the Foreign Office had received a telegram from the British High Commissioner in Kampala. Those were the days when missions abroad communicated with the Foreign Office in London through coded “telegrams”.

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