Legacy of George HW Bush: Invaluable lessons on diplomacy

For a time, when George W Bush was America’s 43rd president, it was in many circles a matter of faith to sneer at him, deriding him as an incompetent son of privilege. This tribal distaste grew to a two-for-the-price-of-one dismissal and was directed at his father, too, George HW Bush, the 41st president of America, who died on Friday, aged 94.

The Bush Boys became a comic staple and that derision, some of it justified but not all, contributed to today’s atmosphere of contempt and distrust — again, some of it justified but again not all — which is radically changing world politics. Comedy, as it does today, inculcated cynicism.