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TV · Netflix · 2023 · 4 seasons

Every book in The Diplomat

4 books on screen30 episodes, 3 with booksCreated by Debora Cahn

Keri Russell plays Kate Wyler, a crisis diplomat who gets parked in London as US ambassador and spends four seasons trying to keep two governments and one marriage from blowing up. Debora Cahn wrote for The West Wing, so the people in charge talk fast and quote the dead. Most of the quoting comes from the British prime minister, who reaches for Shakespeare the way other men reach for a drink.

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Required reading

4 books · in order of appearance
  1. MacbethWilliam Shakespeare, 1623 · S1 E3Buy
  2. The Gutenberg Bible of 1454Stephan Füssel, 2018 · S3 E1Buy
  3. Antony and CleopatraWilliam Shakespeare, 1623 · S3 E1Buy
  4. Madam SecretaryMadeleine Albright, 2003 · S4 E4 · 39:11Buy

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4 entries · episode order
S1E3 · Lambs in the Dark
The Diplomat · S1 E3Sleuthed by @shelfsleuth
Nicol Trowbridge

Trowbridge's garden tour: Macbeth

Mid-crisis, the prime minister stops to show Kate a tree. He says a Winfield House groundskeeper planted a cutting of the Birnam Oak because Barbara Hutton loved the Scottish play. The real Birnam Oak still stands by the River Tay in Perthshire, billed as the last survivor of the wood that marched on Dunsinane. Trowbridge quotes the prophecy about a king who can't lose until the trees start walking, and doesn't see himself in it at all.

S3E1 · Emperor Dead
The Diplomat · S3 E1Sleuthed by @shelfsleuth
Nicol Trowbridge

Trowbridge's swearing-in gift: The Gutenberg Bible of 1454

Someone on the American side wants a Bible that at least looks adult-size for the oath photo. Trowbridge, told he can't be in that photo, turns up with a gift anyway: the Gutenberg Bible. Gutenberg printed it in Mainz in the 1450s, and the Library of Congress counts 49 copies that made it into the twentieth century. Bringing one to a swearing-in is the head-of-state version of showing up with a better bottle than the host.

The Diplomat · S3 E1Sleuthed by @shelfsleuth
Nicol Trowbridge

Trowbridge mourns Rayburn: Antony and Cleopatra

President Rayburn is dead, Grace Penn is about to take the oath, and Trowbridge clears his diary to recite Cleopatra: "His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm crested the world." In Act 5 she says it to one of Caesar's men while describing a dream of the dead Antony, so it's a eulogy delivered to the winning side. He makes it to rattling thunder before the Americans rule that no foreign leader goes in the photo.

S4E4 · Pagliacci
The Diplomat · S4 E4 · 39:11Sleuthed by @shelfsleuth
Kate Wyler · Side table behind the sofa

The stack behind Kate: Madam Secretary

On the side table behind Kate sits Madeleine Albright's Madam Secretary, the 2003 memoir of the first woman to run the State Department. Back in season 2, Kate gets told to pick a gimmick, "pins like Albright," and goes with a black suit instead. Two seasons later the pins still lost, but the book made the set.

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