He's a monstrous creation and yet through the brilliance of the writing we're able to open the character up and see he has redeeming qualities.
"There is one redeeming political virtue of extremism, they do show up to vote," he said, noting that turnout in Virginia in 2009 was just 40% compared with 72% in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.
After I had written a disobliging piece about David Hare, he told me the only redeeming aspect of the experience had been Jane's picture and how crushed he was later to meet her and discover she regarded it as one of her worst.
It could not have been easy to ask hard questions about a man renowned for redeeming children, but Ms Tunstall tells a vivid story.
And redeeming 21st-century middle-class Australian society is not on Mr Tsiolkas's agenda.
The "great redeeming feature of poverty," George Orwell wrote after his excursions in the social gutters of Paris and London, is "the fact that it annihilates the future".
On top of the deleveraging by banks and hedge funds (and others that have financed portfolios with borrowed money), retail investors are redeeming their holdings in mutual funds while companies are no longer supporting their share prices with buy-backs.
And not all demand a shareholder-service fee, which goes to pay the bank, brokerage firm or insurer for servicing the investor's account.On top of these fees come charges for buying and redeeming shares in a mutual fund.
The old rogue must have been sorely tempted to devote his life to self-indulgence, rather than sticking to the task of trying to measure up to his legendary brothers (impossible) and redeeming his own reputation (still unlikely).
Her father, Sir George, had few redeeming qualities.
Yet suspicion of size is growing once again on both the Tea Party right and the Democratic left.So is bigness capable of redeeming itself?
