Christopher Howse meets Mary Douglas, Britain’s foremost anthropologist, and learns the connection between ritual taboos and al-Qa’eda’s cells‘It’s no good attacking enclaves,’ Mary Douglas said, dissecting a piece of guinea fowl on her plate. ‘It just makes them more firmly enclaves.’When I had lunch with her, she sat upright in her chair, not leaning on its back, a slight woman of 86 now, her bright dark eyes set off by silver hair.

A few months ago I asked a Kremlin grandee, who worked with both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, which president of Russia he preferred. I expected him to favour the warm but shambolic Yeltsin rather than the competent but icy Putin. I was wrong. ‘The difference,’ he explained, ‘is that Yeltsin was a capricious Tsar; Putin’s a practical politician.’ But who, I asked was the more lovable? ‘Putin,’ he replied, ‘because he’s always direct and he keeps his word.