How would Richelieu and Mazarin have coped? 
R.W. Johnson
In this short book, Christopher Hitchens sets down the main charges against Kissinger: murder, violation of human rights and complicity in mass atrocities on a scale equalled only by Eichmann, Heydrich and the like. As Hitchens admits, he isn’t the first: Joseph Heller in Good as Gold was as blunt about it all as it was possible to be. Anyone who has studied the 1968-76 period has long been aware that Kissinger could be a very rough customer indeed, and that his role in government gave him unparalleled opportunities for global realpolitik.
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R.W. Johnson, an emeritus fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, lives in Cape Town, where he is completing a book on South Africa since the advent of democracy.
Other articles by this contributor:
Mr Shepperd to you · Classes and Cultures: England 1918-51 by Ross McKibbin
Her Boy · Mark Thatcher
Where do we go from here? · Zimbabwe
Rogue’s Paradise · The Russians and the Anglo-Boer War by Apollon Davidson and Irina Filatova
How Mugabe came to power · R.W. Johnson talks to Wilfred Mhanda
Cads · Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War Two Espionage by Joseph Persico.
Nerds, Rabbits and a General Lack of Testosterone · Major and Lamont
Burning Blankets · Robert Mugabe’s latest tidy-up
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