He was 22 and says the experience made him feel rather as Wordsworth may have done during the early days of the French Revolution.
A strange cognitive effect emerges, or it did for me, after living too long in the fantasy world of others; spend too long in someone else's mind and you feel rather as if you're losing your own.
To some, this may seem like not much of an accomplishment — they may feel rather as a parent feels when a child has, over breakfast, reconciled Lucky Charms and Froot Loops in one bowl — but at the time it seemed life-giving.
Three of the most publicised events of 2011 – Catherine Tate and David Tennant's Much Ado About Nothing, Michael Sheen's Hamlet and Lenny Henry's The Comedy of Errors – give the Cultural Olympiad the problem that audiences may feel rather as if the 100 metres has been staged 12 months early.
Mr Kapuscinski tells it as it felt, rather than as it was, describing sometimes, it seems, distastefully relishing whatever is bizarre, humiliating, disgusting, exotic.In his foreword he observes: "In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist".
I felt rather foolish, as there wasn't a protester in sight.
I felt rather exposed as squeamish, hoping no one would notice me sliding mine back on the plate.
By a week and perhaps six points but the lap of appreciation around Villa Park at the end of this comfortable victory felt rather hollow as once again a club that claimed three successive top-six finishes at the end of the last decade did just enough to maintain their place in the Barclays Premier League.
Things picked up in a vividly characterised second movement, major and minor episodes impeccably contrasted, but even in the bubbling finale, things felt rather reserved – as if here, Ticciati might have done a bit more than simply letting the music speak for itself.
He felt, rather, "circumscribed" as a writer, out of the mainstreams of the cultures he was writing about.
