And so, despite his reputation for smooth talk, Mr Clinton wasted opportunities in 1997 because his talk was inadequate.

ECONOMIST: Bill Clinton��s unexplained idea

Fiennes himself plays the implacable general, who, unable to summon much love for the common people or to feign such feelings in smooth talk, is ejected from Rome.

NEWYORKER: Coriolanus

Moreover, the polyglot Mr Strauss-Kahn, fluent in German, English and Spanish, and with a (third) wife, Anne Sinclair, who until 1997 had her own political chat-show on television, was the perfect man to smooth-talk journalists and placate suspicious foreigners.

ECONOMIST: A sad adieu to Dominique Strauss-Kahn