A former colleague during Turner’s time in May’s No. 10 said the ambassadorial pick is “one of those just incredibly accomplished people who seems to achieve difficult things really quickly.”
“When he became ambassador to Pakistan, he learned Urdu in about three months, and went from, as far as I know, no knowledge of the language whatsoever, to being able to have detailed conversations about the future of the Pakistani cricket team,” they said. The same former colleague described Turner as “really effective” while also being a good colleague — two qualities which few senior figures possess at the same time.
Peter Ricketts, former national security adviser and head of the diplomatic service, said Turner had been “at the center of the policymaking action in the FCDO over the last three years of constant crisis, and is always calm, focused and constructive.”
Ciaran Martin, a colleague of Turner from the Blatvanik School of Government, said the pick was “equally at home at the center of government as he is heading a mission in a difficult environment. He’s a first-rate problem solver. He might appear as a traditional civil service type but he has a very dry, almost wicked sense of humor.”
Turner made TV documentaries before joining government in the 1990s. It appears he continued to dabble. The name Christian Turner is credited “with thanks” in the 2013 series “Ambassadors,” which starred British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb as diplomats in the fictional Central Asian Republic of Tazbekistan.
A second person who has worked with Turner hailed an “intense intelligence and calculation behind anything he says or does,” as well as an aptitude for “something painfully lacking in Whitehall, and that is speed.”