Mr Castelli's critics sometimes accused him of being a shallow man, interested only in the shock of the new.

ECONOMIST: The

But Mr Laar, a talkative man in a taciturn nation, sometimes seems better at burnishing his country's image to foreigners than at connecting with his own people, many of whom think of him as glib, even slippery.

ECONOMIST: Charlemagne

In this, as sometimes in the way he used his newspapers, he seemed to show a rich man's contempt for decency.

ECONOMIST: Walter Annenberg