A return visit by Patrick O'Donovan

'Washington is more than a capital city. It is a place devoted to government as a monastery is to prayer. It heaves with rumours and boils with information. No political man can resist it.'

Patrick O'Donovan spent many years there reporting for The Observer. On the eve of Bicentennial Year he returned, after an absence of ten years, to find out how the Washington of the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era had changed from the city he knew. America has suffered three major shocks: a lost war, a disgraced President and a major recession. But, says Patrick O'Donovan, power still runs into Washington like gold into a crucible. It is still good for a European, be he despairing or complacent, to go there.