After six wonderful years in Britain my term as ambassador has come to an end. It has been a great honour to represent Sweden in the UK and I am very grateful to the Swedish community as well as to the British people for having been so supportive. It has been a most interesting time politically, economically as well as…

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On Saturday the Swedish Minister for Defence Peter Hultqvist and the UK Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon signed a Programme of Defence Cooperation in London. The signing took place at Admiralty House in conjunction with a bilateral meeting between the ministers. The Programme of Defence Cooperation includes more than 50 activities focusing on enhancing interoperability and improving our…

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I recently had the honour of attending a memorial service at Guildhall to celebrate the life of Sir Nicholas, but also a beautiful memorial concert at St John’s Smith Square. I then thought about when I met Sir Nicholas Winton at the Swedish residence a few years ago. He was very charming and had lots of advice for the World….

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I was very pleased to have the President and CEO Alf Göransson as keynote speaker at the Industrial Forum. Securitas AB is one of the largest security services companies in the world and employs more than 300 000 people in some 60 countries. Securitas is now the largest Swedish company in the UK with 15,500 employees. It was very interesting…

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An estimated 200 million viewers will watch this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm. It is the biggest TV entertainment show in the world and the Swedes seem to love it more than anyone else. Eurovision is a spectacular, exciting sing-off with more than countries from all over Europe and beyond, competing against each other to be the best in…

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This week we inaugurated the new Sweden House in London. It is wonderful to have the embassy and the Swedish organisations Business Sweden, The Chamber of Commerce and VisitSwden located in the same refurbished building. It is also great to be back in our offices after having moved around in the building. A big thank you to everyone that made this…

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Today I attended a most fascinating seminar on “A future with autonomous cars”. It was a seminar hosted by Volvo Car Group and Thatcham Research. You might think that autonomous driving cars is very much something that belongs to the future, but the truth is that these cars are already out there. Next year the Swedish carmaker Volvo plans to…

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The Polar Music Prize is one of the most prestigious and unique music prizes in the world. The 2016 Laureates are the exceptional Swedish songwriter, record producer and singer Max Martin and the amazing Italian mezzo-soprano opera singer Cecilia Bartoli. To celebrate the winners we all gathered at the residence for Polar Talks – chaired by Marie Ledin, managing director…

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The Swedish Minister for Culture and Democracy Alice Bah Kuhnke had an intensive programme when she visited London in mid March. The programme included a bilateral meeting with the UK Secretary of State for Culture John Whittingdale, a speech at the Women in the Creative Industries Day as well an interview with CNN where the topic was migration. The visit…

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Today I had the opportunity to visit the Hilma af Klint exhibition ”Painting the Unseen” at the Serpentine Galleries. It was a beautiful exhibition that I can strongly recommend and I was pleased to see so many members of the af Klint family.

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was in many ways an extraordinary artist. It is fascinating that she did…

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