- Distinguished Fellow, All Souls College (from 2013 to 2021)
- Senior Vice-President and Chief Programme Officer (from 2007 to 2012), then Senior Program Advisor (2012 to 2021), Salzburg Global Seminar
- Two-Year Fellow, All Souls College (from 2006 to 2008)
- Chief Speechwriter, Executive Office of the Secretary-General and, additionally, Director of Communications (from 2001), United Nations (from 1998 to 2006)
- Honorary Professor, University of Warwick (from 1993 to 1998)
- Research Associate, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London (from 1990 to 1991)
- Foreign Affairs Commentator, Financial Times (from 1987 to 1998)
- Two-Year Fellow, All Souls College (from 1984 to 1986)
- Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, New York (from 1980 to 1981)
- Assistant Paris Correspondent (1967–70) and Foreign Specialist and Leader-Writer on Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Affairs (1973–85), The Times
- Prize Fellow, All Souls College (from 1965 to 1972)
- Undergraduate, Balliol College, Oxford (from 1962 to 1965)
- Politics
- Contemporary history
- 'Europe’s future: 1814, 1914 – or something completely different?' (Inaugural Palliser Lecture, House of Lords, 3 February 2014).
- (co-editor) People, Nation and State: the Meaning of Ethnicity and Nationalism (London: I.B. Tauris, 1999).
- A Few Words on Intervention (London: John Stuart Mill Institute, 1995).
- European Security after the Cold War (London: Brassey's for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1992).
- The World That FDR Built: Vision and Reality (New York: Scribner's, 1989).
- The Rise of the French Communist Party, 1920-1947 (London: Faber and Faber, 1984).
- Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam (London: Faber and Faber, 1982).
- France and the Africans, 1944-1960: A Political History (London: Faber, 1969).