I had dinner last night with the editor-in-chief of Tagesspiegel, Berlin's leading newspaper. On searching for the link I came across this article. I met Joachim Fest when he came to London to promote his book about the last days of the Third Reich Inside Hitler's Bunker. He was a brilliant man, a brilliant historian and a brilliant writer. Amazingly, his entry in Wikipedia has already been updated.

At the dinner we were discussing the Natascha Kampusch TV interview and the widely held belief that no person could have been so composed after such an ordeal and that therefore this was not her but an actress. I suppose this falls into the conspiracy theory genre which includes the (non)moon landing, Elvis Presley is dead, Lady Diana was murdered but who knows...

Later today we have the first international sales conference of Macmillan Medical Communications, our newest publishing venture. Our first wave of launches are in Latin America, India, Japan, Spain, Turkey and Asia-Pacific. Our aim is to become the number one in this field within five years and the number one for quality from day one. I'll keep you up to date with our progress.