Patricia Highsmith was so enamoured with Tom Ripley – currently being played by Andrew Scott in the Netflix adaptation – that she’d sign letters using his name and describe murder as a ‘kind of making love’. But, as her biographer Andrew Wilson discovered, her most famous killer was a cover for her own darkest thoughts...

Jack Straw was the first foreign secretary to visit Iran after the 1979 revolution and is used to negotiating with its leaders – even, on one occasion, from a train loo. Here, he explains why Netanyahu and Khamenei are throwing each other a lifeline to stay in power, and warns we could all pay the price...