Nixon, Reagan, Thatcher, and Pol Pot

“It is my duty,” wrote the correspondent of the Times at the liberation of Belsen, “to describe something beyond the imagination of mankind.” That was how I felt in the summer of 1979, arriving in Cambodia in the wake of Pol Pot’s genocidal regime. In the silent, gray humidity, Phnom Penh, the size of Manchester, was like a city that had sustained a nuclear cataclysm which had spared only the buildings. Houses, flats, offices, schools, hotels stood empty and open, as if vacated that day. Personal possessions lay trampled on a path; traffic lights were jammed on red. There was … Continue reading →