Given all that, out of the TV shows to send to the mother country, surely this one could be skipped? I'd argue just the opposite: This is exactly the kind of cultural product America should be exporting.

Culture Secretary Maria Miller today launched a tourism partnership strategy for Britain which calls for the travel industry and the government, together with key public and private sector bodies, to unite behind a long-term ambition for growth that would see Britain welcome 40 million overseas visitors by 2020, spending £31.5 billion and supporting an additional 200,000 jobs across the country.

“The British Council has responded to challenging financial conditions since the 2010 Spending Review and we are glad that the Committee has recognised that we have continued to successfully deliver our work and be “a major instrument of UK public diplomacy and ‘soft power’”.

I was recently invited to attend a Wilton Park round-table discussion titled "Applying soft power: the Brazilian and British perspectives" in São Paulo. Wilton Park is a think tank funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to explore policy issues that affect the UK in various ways.

It's apt that Simon Fraser, permanent under-secretary to the Foreign Office, head of the diplomatic service and chair of the FCO board, should have a copy of Henry Kissinger's seminal work, Diplomacy, in his Whitehall office.

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks today published more than 1.7 million United States records, covering diplomatic or intelligence reports on every country in the world. Much of the work was carried out by founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He sought refuge there last June over fears he would be sent to the US if he was extradited to Sweden to face sexual offence claims by two women.