Robert Fisk, a voice on the Middle East, died on October 30th

ROBERT FISK, who died in Dublin on October 30th, aged 74, was one of the most influential correspondents in the Middle East since the second world war. For the past 30-odd years he wrote mainly for the , a left-of-centre British newspaper with dwindling circulation and influence at home, but his reach extended far beyond. His bitter narrative of Arab victimhood and Western wickedness (particularly American and Israeli), often brilliantly crafted, resonated across the region and was picked up in newspaper columns, by radio stations and on campuses across the world, America included. Again and again, Western correspondents in Cairo, Damascus or Baghdad would listen politely as Fisk-aficionados, from diplomats and politicians to taxi drivers and coffee-house waiters, regaled them with the wisdom of Mr Fisk’s latest diatribe.Brought up in small-town England, Mr Fisk (pictured) made his journalistic mark for the , covering the Troubles in Northern Ireland, where the British authorities found his reports unduly keen on the Irish republican cause; he later took up Irish citizenship, while keeping a British passport. Leading the paeans of praise on his death was Ireland’s president.