" But Lord Longford said: "I am very sorry indeed that a high-minded man, a Christian socialist, like Jack Straw should have taken that decision.

BBC: Longford 'disgusted' that Hindley will die in jail

The original argument for the Obama presidency was that this was a new, open-minded and liberal man intent on elevating the common good.

WSJ: Henninger: Obama's Thunderdome Strategy

Mr Keegan's and Mr Watt's desire to be fair-minded and not to kick a man when he is down may be admirable.

ECONOMIST: Slugging through the mud | The

Women need to be career minded and not depend solely on a man for their survival.

FORBES: Readers Say

Galvin's point man on the semiconductor turnaround is Hector Ruiz, group president, a tough-minded engineer who came up through the ranks in chips and paging.

FORBES: Motorola inside

Worse still, how could the business-minded, property-owning, moneylending materialist that emerges from the documentary scraps, be the same man as the poet of the plays?

ECONOMIST: The man and his pen

He seemed bemused by his transformation from loner to the man everyone wanted to speak to, and perhaps as a defence, he was absent-minded: he had only one lecture a year to give at Oxford, but sometimes he forgot to turn up.

ECONOMIST: Bill Hamilton