Tim Blair

SHAMANISTIC POET DISSED

The best lines sometimes lurk in final paragraphs:

Security men removed a self-styled "shamanistic poet", Niall McDevitt, from the lecture, when he accused Prof Ferguson of trying to "alleviate guilt" [about the empire], while reciting a poem in pidgin on the imperial legacy in the New Hebrides islands in the Pacific.

"I know you are Irish," Prof Ferguson told him, "but what is your question?"