Recently, I’ve been thinking about Shimon Peres. When I first met him in the mid-1980s, it was, I think, just after his first term as prime minister of Israel. He had moved to the foreign ministry. He served a second term as premier in the mid-1990s and then went on to become president from 2007 till 2014. He was a member of 12 cabinets, represented five political parties and served 46 unbroken years in the Knesset, in a political career spanning seven decades. Quite honestly, I know few politicians like him.

At the time I was anchoring “The World This Week”, which London Weekend Television used to make for Channel 4. It was a Sunday morning show that dwelt on the key foreign affairs concerns of the time.

We flew to Tel Aviv to interview Peres. When he first walked into the room where we had set up our cameras, he was polite but perfunctory. I thought he was in a hurry to get the interview over with. I soon realised that my first impression was terribly........

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