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Back in 1978, I was living in Oxford writing a DPhil doctorate about Percy Bysshe Shelley. I was supplementing my student grant by teaching English as a foreign language for the Oxford Intensive School of English, which specialised in one-on-one two-hour tutorials. For three months, five days a week, I taught an Iranian petrochemical engineer called Farid who confidently told me, early on in what became a real friendship, that there would be a revolution in Iran and that the shah would be deposed. I was sceptical – there were too many Western vested interests in the country for that to happen, I argued. You wait and see, Farid said. A placid and good-natured young man, he longed for the end of the shah’s reign with untypical fervour, even though he was no great admirer of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Farid was right.…