BILL BROWDER: America uses all its might to free hostages from barbarous abductors. So why does Britain still think it’s a job for dusty Foreign Office mandarins?

Hostage-taking has a long and fearful history, and those who have been held tend to stay in the mind. Who can forget the names of Terry Waite and John McCarthy, held for years in Lebanon by Islamic Jihad?

Who can forget Entebbe, when 103 hostages from a hijacked French plane were rescued by Israeli commandos, or the horror of the Munich Olympics in 1972, when nine Israeli athletes were taken by Palestinian terrorists? All nine were murdered.

Today we are transfixed not just by the appalling attack on Israel by the terrorist group Hamas, but by the unbearable cruelty of the hostage-taking that has followed.

At least 200 people, including up to ten Britons, were kidnapped and taken to Gaza, where they are being used as pawns in Hamas’s diplomatic engagements with the West.

These victims are at the forefront of public attention, and rightly so.

The British Government has failed to adjust to the fact that hostage-taking is rising exponentially, as  more than 50 Britons are held…