Going on and on

Fidel Castro, hélas, et encore, hélas, hélas. Castro is the most famous Latin American since Bolívar, one of the few to have achieved world fame. He deserves it, as a third-world revolutionary and as a survivor. There are many studies of him, and here is another, the product of some hundred hours of interviews conducted by Ignacio Ramonet, whose inexhaustible stamina in serving him up sycophantic lobs seems to have surprised even Castro himself.

Though monumentally uncritical and containing few if any new revelations, it is not entirely useless. It summarises the Castro line on a wide range of subjects. As the Spanish saying goes, the Devil does not know so many things because he is the Devil, but because he is so old, and Castro has the longest experience of all heads of state with the exception of Queen Elizabeth II and the King of Thailand, whose trials have been less demanding.