Sierra Leone and the UK

Available for over a year

Owen Bennett Jones introduces personal stories, wit and analysis from correspondents around the world. In this edition, Tamasin Ford finds people in Sierra Leone and Liberia still have strong feelings about warlord Charles Taylor, while Paul Moss remembers a character from his schooldays: a friend who ended up a convicted fraudster, "Lord" Eddie Davenport. The "dirty pebbles" which paid for a war Blood diamonds - it's a resonant, powerful phrase that perfectly captures a dangerous mix of brutality and glamour. For these precious stones - regardless of their beauty when cut and set - have funded some of the ugliest crimes imaginable: mutilation, rape, forced labour and murder. The trade has affected several west and central African countries, but at the moment the focus is on Liberia and Sierra Leone, as the world waits for the verdict on former president Charles Taylor from his trial in the Hague. Tamasin Ford has been to his homeland, and some of the places where his forces once fought, to see how the natural resource that should have enriched many West African lives has in fact blighted them. My school friend, the fake Lord Con men have existed in every age and doubtless always will. The trick seems to be to rely on your victim's hopes, ambitions and greed. And it always helps to win their confidence if you have a respectable sounding title. Paul Moss once had a friend who he envied for the way he seemed to mingle effortlessly with the cream of British society. But as it turned out, this acquaintance - who once called himself a Lord - was in fact a fake; and now he's behind bars.