For three months my view of the outside world was confined to what I could see through a cell window. My knowledge of the Falklands conflict was gained from Argentine news and current affairs programmes, which I watched on TV in the prison refectory and, occasionally, from broadcasts on the BBC World Service.
The saga began in mid-Atlantic on a Ministry of Defence plane on which I was travelling to cover a Nato meeting in Colorado with the then Defence Secretary, John Nott. The MoD's chief press officer, Ian McDonald, was known for an idiosyncratic habit which we did not always appreciate. He would tap English literature for appropriate quotations that would come in useful for sphinx-like answers to our questions. So a reply, 'Hamlet, Act One, Scene Two, Line 215' would turn out to be Hamlet on the Ghost: 'But answer made it none'.
It was McDonald's proud boast that he never once used the phrase, 'No comment'. But on the RAF flight from Britain he was in a more helpful mood, though still playful. 'Ask him about Georgia,' he whispered mischievously as Nott was about to make his way to the back of the plane to talk to the correspondents.
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