Was he mad? Was he evil? One psychiatrist said to me that Stalin could be defined as being a paranoid schizophrenic but Hitler

Was he mad? Was he evil? One psychiatrist said to me that Stalin could be defined as being a paranoid schizophrenic but Hitler only as having a severe personality disorder. That sets one thinking, “Jesus Christ, what is a personality disorder if it is going to lead to the massacre of millions and millions of people?” I wouldn’t have any specific questions for him. I think I would just like to sit there and watch him.Do you have any plans to write another book with your wife? Sarah Entwhistle, by e-mailWell, she’s doing a biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor and I’ll be doing a little bit on that Writing together is a huge pleasure. Most people say, “Isn’t it an instant route to divorce?” But it’s not It’s great. You’re never short of anything to talk about the whole time you’re writing together. While we were writing Paris after the Liberation the only crisis came right at the end.

I had to write the final chapter and when I showed it to Artemis, she said it wasn’t right But she couldn’t put her finger on why Of course, I threw my teddy in the corner. It was our American editor, Jackie Onassis, who worked out what was wrong It was a month before she died and she was still working. She was fascinated with the book because she’d been in Paris during that period. She was always dismissed as a society airhead, which was unfair because she had a very good eye as an editor.If you were in the Army now, would you willingly serve in Iraq? Harriet Osbourne, LondonI would have served with very mixed feelings. I think this war is ill considered, for a whole number of reasons. For one, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict should have been resolved first, because otherwise, not surprisingly, Arab opinion will believe this war is pure hypocrisy on the part of the West.

But once you have confronted a dictator, you have to carry it through, otherwise it will encourage other dictators. The French claim that we could have disarmed Saddam through diplomatic means is sheer sophistry. No dictator will ever disarm voluntarily.’Berlin: The Downfall 1945′ is published in paperback by Penguin tomorrow, priced £12.99. There is the faintest whiff of disinfectant from the lift lobby on the ninth floor of the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong. A lonely jar of artificial flowers stands in front of the mirrored glass and there are two pastel drawings of rural Chinese scenes on the wall.

But no itinerant businessmen or eager tourists linger here to examine them. For this is a tainted place, a microbiological “hot zone”, where one sneeze sparked a global panic. Lifts whisper up and down ferrying the few remaining guests to their rooms on other floors. How different from the scene on Friday 21 February, when the hotel was buzzing with people and a group of guests gathered in this lobby to wait for a lift to take them to the ground floor. Within days, three of them would be dead.One was already ill. Professor Liu Jianlun, a 64-year-old specialist in respiratory medicine, had travelled by bus the previous day from the city of Guangzhou, in the neighbouring Chinese province of Guangdong, a three-hour journey.