Welcome to a world of impossibly devious plots and characters--ambitious presidents and prime ministers from all corners of the world, some determined to hold onto power at any cost; a British government often with a misplaced sense of its own role in one of the world's oldest organizations; and an organization of 300 people, externally working to help the world, while inwardly struggling along racial and geo-political lines

For the first eight years of the 21st century, Don McKinnon was the Secretary General of the Commonwealth and this was the stuff of his day-to-day life, whether...