A hero for our time?

They were in the Greek Orthodox cathedral in London on Valentine’s Day 1989 for Bruce Chatwin’s memorial service — all of London’s literary elite, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Antonia Fraser and the rest. Outside the cathedral the journalists and snappers had gathered, but they were not there for Chatwin. Halfway through the service Rushdie felt a tap on his arm. From the pew behind, the American novelist Paul Theroux whispered: ‘I suppose we’ll be here for you next week, Salman.’

Earlier that day the religious leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, had issued a fatwa demanding that the world’s Muslims had a duty to murder the author of The Satanic Verses; the frail old thug had almost certainly not read the book, but the fatwa was embraced with great eagerness — and so began Rushdie’s exile from his own life for the best part of a decade.

Forced to flee his home and endure a peripatetic existence, his every movement was controlled by the team of policemen who comprised ‘Operation Malachite’, the grudging official response to the threats against him.