But he has managed to stay grandiloquently vague on policy and not particularly modern on those rare occasions when he has chosen, as he reluctantly did last week, to toss a sprinkling of detail into the air.

ECONOMIST: Salesman Schr?der

With the Syrian track dead, Arafat knew as he set off reluctantly for the Camp David summit in 2000 that the hopes of Mr Clinton and Mr Barak now depended on him.

ECONOMIST: America and the Middle East: How to learn from history | The

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke when he reluctantly nominated Hitler as the century's dominant character.

CNN: The necessary evil?

As a declared monarchist, he set up the referendum only reluctantly, and did nothing to engage the country in debate.

ECONOMIST: Australia mislays its republic

David had only reluctantly introduced them to the Harts, hustling the conversation along as he fetched his duffelbag on the morning of the first departure.

NEWYORKER: Or Else

He went into politics reluctantly, at first unwilling to abandon his career as a small-town lawyer.

ECONOMIST: Jack Lynch

He also had to present it as a victim, a plucky little population of about 13m, reluctantly taking on a bully with nearly three times as many people and all the resources of an established state.

ECONOMIST: Emeka Ojukwu