Madam, Where Are Your Mangoes? is featured in the Times diary on three different occasions! Here are the three stories…

‘De Silva’s book has lots of good anecdotes, such as the one about a dinner thrown by the chief of the general staff, after which the US ambassador lit up a large Cuban cigar. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, foreign secretary at the time, gently observed that America had long had sanctions against such things, to which the ambassador replied: “Yes, I am helping to burn the enemy’s crops.” The Times Diary, 30th September 

‘Sir Desmond de Silva, QC, who has just published his memoirs, shared a chambers early in his career with Learie Constantine, the former West Indies Test cricketer and later Britain’s first black peer. Constantine, right, had three trays for correspondence on his desk, marked “In” “Out” and “LBW.” De Silva asked what the last stood for. “Let the buggers wait,” Constantine replied. It reminds me of a story about Nicholas Ridley, the former minister, who said that happiness was an empty in-tray, an empty out-tray and a full ashtray.’ The Times Diary, 3rd October 

‘Justice can be blind literally as well as metaphorically. Desmond de Silva, QC, writes in his new book about a fearsome magistrate who had  a glass eye so perfectly made it was impossible to tell it from the real one. A young barrister eventually whispered to his senior for a hint about how to tell which was fake. “It’s the one with the little bit of humanity in it, dear boy,” came the reply.’ The Times Diary,  4th October 

Get a copy of Madam, Where Are Your Mangoes? by Desmond de Silva now!