... The celebrated historian Niall Ferguson, a rigorous and imaginative thinker, wrote a crushing critique of Pinter's argument that such was the hegemony of the US in the 20th century that its evils -- from supporting right-wing dictatorships in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Greece, Haiti and more, to Vietnam and the current excursion in Iraq -- were barely recognised or discussed in the Western world.

Ferguson took issue with that and, expectedly, made a bravura argument against it. ''Nobody pretends that the US came through the Cold War with clean hands,'' he wrote.

''But to pretend that its crimes were equivalent to those of its communist opponents -- and that they have been wilfully hushed up -- is fatally to blur the distinction between truth and falsehood. That may be permissible on stage. I am afraid it is quite routine in diplomacy. But it is unacceptable in serious historical discussion.''

And here is the rub.

''So stick to plays, Harold, and stop torturing history,'' Ferguson continued. ''Even if there was a Nobel Prize for it, you wouldn't stand a chance.

''Because in my profession, unlike yours -- and unlike Condi's, too -- there really are hard distinctions between what is true and what is false.''...