Flabbergasted

It's always interesting to revisit the past; to polish up memories of things that happened when you were just a little too young to remember them properly, or be fully aware of what people were thinking or doing. So, here's an extract from an article by Peregrine Worsthorne in the Sunday Telegraph during the Rushdie affair, some time in 1989 (I'd forgotten that the fatwa was issued on Valentine's day, which is indicative of a slightly sick sense of news management):

Salman Rushdie's apology may well reduce the danger to his life. But it won't remove it, and it is ironic that someone who was only recently inveighing against Mrs Thatcher for having created a police state should now be compelled to rely on that same police state to save his life. As a result of this experience perhaps he and his friend will come to realise the debt they owe to the practice of phone-tapping, since without that right the security services would never know where to look for would-be assassins.