"The Catholic Orangemen of Togo"

I’ve just made a start on Craig Murray’s new book  “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo” (which he is making available for free via this link), and it’s certainly a page-turner. I suspect that I’m slightly more obsessive than most about what makes for a really good first paragraph, but this certainly works for me:

I spent the eve of the Millennium in my garden, on the spacious lawns of Devonshire House in Accra, hosting a seven course meal for 120 people, with dancing, fireworks and unlimited champagne. Despite the hysterical rubbish with which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had been bombarding me for weeks, the World’s computers didn’t crash, and the future looked bright.

Osama Bin Laden doesn’t use the Christian calendar so wasn’t celebrating that night. He had already accepted the idea – not originally his – of suicide attacks involving hijacked aircraft. His al-Qaida network had about 180 members. Al Gore looked pretty safe to win the democratic nomination and the Presidency. George Bush was a blip on the horizon whose record as a Vietnam draft-dodger would surely scupper his chances.

The World was on the brink of unhappier times. But we didn’t know it, and I was happily immersed in what remains my first and abiding concern…

Click here for more…

See also The Ex Labour Minister & the African Private Equity Firm for a further extract, in which Murray alleges dodgy dealings by former DFID minister Baroness Amos.