We're in the area of the Mary Ward Café, part of an adult learning centre. They have a cosy little vegetarian café that we've used in the past because of its proximity to the London School of Economics, where we sometimes go for evening lectures. Tonight there's a very nice broccoli and cauliflower quiche, which we both choose, or a vegetarian moussaka, which also looks good.
The presentation we go to after supper isn't at the LSE but at the London Review of Books shop, where veteran maverick journalist Seymour Hersh is interviewed by LRB editor Adam Shatz. Hersh is famous for having broken the stories of the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib abuses. More recently, and more controversially, he has written on Assad and the poison gas issue (he argues, plausibly, that the Syrian Army wasn't responsible for the Ghouta incident) and has refuted the official American version of the killing of Osama bin Ladin. Tonight he's in good form, entertaining and reminiscing on his decades as a reporter and journalist. Shatz is a little too gentle in bringing out the genial and skimming over the criticisms - which mostly come down to sources that were intimately involved but reluctant to be cited publicly. Hersh claims that if they are not willing to confirm their accounts to his editors he doesn't use them as sources. And certainly in the past the official story was cover up bs and Hersh was right. Small shop, but sold out. Anyway, Hersh enjoying himself, audience uncritical, glasses of wine.