Diary – 16 November 2002

Whatever critics might say about Martin Amis’s Kobra the Dread, his recent book on Stalin’s atrocities, he was certainly right when he pointed out that people are generally indulgent, even flippant, about communist tyrants in a way they would never be about Nazis. This thought strikes me every morning as I walk through Canary Wharf on my way to work and catch sight of a large marble bust of Lenin, placed – by way of ornament – on a shelf above the counter of Mark Birley’s excellent sandwich bar.