Whatever Mr Solana and, from across the Atlantic, Bill Clinton said to the Turks, it was enough to keep the Sublime Porte ajar.

ECONOMIST: The European Union decides it might one day talk Turkey | The

Entering a strange region, he would grapple with its history, rifling through the Encyclopedia Britannica and Meyers Konversationslexicon to trace the movements of tribes and the collision of cultures, producing in his books whole page-lists of Klephts and Armatoles, Kroumides and Koniarides, Phanariots of the Sublime Porte and boyars of Moldowallachia, until his readers swooned.

ECONOMIST: Paddy Leigh Fermor