Ryszard Kapuściński has died

Sadly Ryszard Kapuściński died yesterday of a heart attack while recovering from surgery in Warsaw.

In my opinion the veteran Polish foreign correspondent was one of the world's most outstanding writers, and was deservedly nominated for the Nobel prize in 2005.

To get a taste for the very special reporting talent of this most literary of witnesses, you can start with The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life.

Also worth reading is The Soccer War, his account of the background to the 1969 conflict between El Salvador and Honduras, which was sparked by a World Cup qualifier.