Kofi Annan

"Yes, in contrast to my first choice, this is a book that is hot off the presses. Fred explains that the reason he came to write the book is that he was the spokesman for Kofi Annan dealing with all the attacks: the oil-for-food scandal and so on. And at the end, (and I also was working as part of Kofi Annan’s team at that time) we wanted to try and define Kofi’s legacy and his achievements. And Fred asked me: “Well, have we actually got a list of the most important things that Kofi Annan has done in ten years as Secretary-General?” And we realized that we didn’t. So we started compiling a list, and in a way that list has grown into this book. And Fred has set about writing it in a quite interesting way, which is he did drafts of the various chapters, and then he sent them around to all his friends and colleagues and people who knew Kofi well and had worked with him. And he asked for their comments, and that of course stimulated pretty much all of us to write back saying: “Well yes that’s right” or “No, that’s not quite right, but what you haven’t mentioned is this…”. So the account gradually got filled out."