Re-writing the rulebook is all in a day’s work for the first-ever female British ambassador to Spain.

In May 2007, Denise Holt was inaugurated as the UK's newest Ambassador to Spain, making her the first female ambassador to the country in more than 500 years of diplomatic history. However, it wasn't her gender that concerned her -- it was that looming number: 500 years; the longest-standing relationship the UK has with any secular country. "You arrive as a slightly small, middle-aged woman who's never been posted to Madrid before, and with quite a lot of difficult challenges on the desk, and you think, 'Oh, my God! How am I going to get on top of all of this?'" However, by all accounts, Denise has risen to the challenge.

"The satisfaction is that I revisited that feeling after a few months, and I realised that it could be done; that you steadily plow through meeting five or six ministers, businessmen, etcetera, everyday, trying to make an impression and to be sufficiently sensible," she explains, "That was very challenging, but so far, so good."

"I must say," she adds, "it's great fun being the first. It gives you quite a lot of scope because nobody knows how you should do it."

It's obvious that the ambassador's warm and self-deprecating sense of humour compliment her strong character and diplomatic savvy when she discusses her role as a so-called feminist pioneer.
"I'm quite old," she smiles matter-of-factly, "Women of my generation have almost always been the first woman doing whatever it is they're doing at the time, and that is no credit to us -- it's just that society happens to have changed, luckily for me, just as I'm going through it."

Indeed, this is not the first time that Denise has been in an important leadership position. She began her career with the British Embassy in 1984 as First Secretary in Dublin, where she met her husband David, who was also serving in the Embassy. She subsequently held positions as First Secretary in Brazil and UK Ambassador in Mexico before arriving in Madrid.

"I don't honestly find that [my gender] has ever been an obstacle to doing my job. When I'm wearing a hat that says 'British Ambassador', people don't really care whether I'm male or female; they just want to see me because they've got a job to do." The only time it gets tricky, she says, is at the occasional work-related social gathering. "If everybody is male with a female spouse, it's a little difficult for me to know whether to go and chat to the female spouses or to do my job and chat to the husbands, which the women might not like," she continues, "But worse -- my husband might find it rather tedious to have to chat to the female spouses!" But, she insists, "he's very obliging and supportive."

Read the full story in our April 2008 issue.