BOOK REVIEW Gush and glibness spread through Tom Plate’s ‘Doctor M: Operation Malaysia - Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad’ like irksome background noise. And rather than show us the former prime minister of Malaysia for what he is, Plate tells us how to picture him.

One of the most fawning comments he makes about Mahathir, whom he generously plugs as a “soft authoritarian”, is that “the best doctors are almost always soft authoritarians. They make you take the medicine that’s good for you, whether you like it or not.”