THREE CURRENT-AFFAIRS experts have consistently impressed me on British TV: Philip Windsor, who sadly drank himself to death; Hazhir Teimourian, whose wine intake is modest; and Timothy Garton Ash, with whose alcohol consumption I am as little familiar as his person.

Garton Ash is a serious figure whose views are respected in chambers of power on both sides of the Atlantic. He is neither a left-wing moralist, nor one of those callow lovers of shallow paradox who thrive among the right-wing 'commentariat'. His writing is punchy rather than puerile, and the