I have met Dr Kissinger, properly, only three times. First, in Cairo, in 1980, when, as a junior diplomat escorting Edward Heath, I had to secure for an almost desperate former British prime minister a meeting with the former US secretary of state, also in town. Once with Kissinger, Heath promptly subsided into a deep slumber. I had the alarming experience of trying to keep the conversation going. The other occasions were more recent, but almost as scary. My hostess at the ‘secret’ (but much publicised) transatlantic talkfests which Kissinger (92 this year) still attends twice summoned me to sit beside the great man at dinner.
On each occasion I felt like the luckless passenger in the Economist’s vintage television commercial. Settling into seat 2A for a transatlantic flight, he finds Dr Kissinger descending into seat 2B. Not being a subscriber to that magazine, the traveller wonders how on earth he is going to make intelligent conversation with the great man for the next seven hours.
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