Argentina is really in a different category because they butchered all their Indian or indigenous people in the war of the desert in 1850s. Which sets them aside from their neighbors in a macabre way.

There are no young people who know how to debate, who know how to vote, and who know how to persuade people to vote. And you have seen this in Paraguay and they are reaping the harvest now of fifty years of dictatorship.

The noise that we can expect in the future will only increase and we'll be wishing for rural Portugal or something like that.

When McDonald's opened up in Moscow - I happened to be there when it opened and wandered in. And the Russians were queuing three times around the block to get in. And when they got to the head of the queue, they'd go, "I'll have a Big Mac please. Have you the cheese and the rolls? And do you have the meat and do you have the salad?" And everybody asks this because they are so used to things being awful that it took them a quarter of an hour to order a Big Mac.

I am sure you have met diplomats; they probably travel far less than you do. Okay, they get to know a place very intensely - sometimes only the capitol city.

It never stops me from saying what I want to say about Ethiopia, the fact that a tour company is paid for me to go there. Book reviewers don't pay for the books they review.

Benedict Allen gives you the impression that he hasn't done any research at all, and I am sure he has. And when he is off doing his ice dogs and that sort of thing - and therefore its not only an exploration of the place but also his imagination in a sense. It's very successful as technique.