Hér er lýsing á fastanefnd Íslendinga hjá NATO, eins og Alan Davidson sá hana þegar hann var sjálfur að störfum hjá NATO í Brussel laust fyrir 1970. Hann sagði mér að hann hefði fylgst sérstaklega vel með störfum þeirra - ekki komist hjá því reyndar, því að skrifstofa hans var þannig staðsett í byggingunni að hann horfði út um gluggann hjá sér beint inn um gluggana hjá Íslendingunum. Ætli þetta sé ekki nokkuð nærri lagi?

,,In another part of the building, the tiny suite of offices which housed the Icelandic Delegation was, as usual, in a state of complete calm. The four members of the delegation, between them, had to represent their distant island in scores of different committees. Their wits were fully exercised in arranging their diaries so that the presence of Iceland would be manifest in at least the most important of these; to have gone further, and sought instructions from Reykjavik on all the matters under discussion, would have been beyond their powers. It was therefore their practice to say little at meetings; and in this way they did more to further the work of the alliance than many of their colleagues in other delegations who, by zealously compelling their governments to instruct them on every detail, and by zealously following these instructions, could create quite intense debates on matters about which nobody, themselves included, really cared a fig."

Úr skáldsögunni Something Quite Big, sem Alan skrifaði á meðan hann var í Brussel (breska sendinefndin var víst ekki jafn ,,störfum hlaðin" og sú íslenska) en utanríkisráðuneytið bannaði honum að gefa út. Hann lét samt prenta hana nafnlaust í Bangkok 1972, það var á meðan hann var sendiherra í Laos; sú útgáfa gengur undir nafninu samizdat-útgáfan.