“I had a very religious upbringing,” he says, “but I really feel scrubbed clean of all that. I still have a tremendous fondness for the King James version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer But the meat of it means absolutely nothing to me. I can’t remember that I ever actually believed.” He has a similar attitude to the Koran: “In many ways it’s a wonderful book. But it’s scarcely a guide for the perplexed.” When I tell him that Tony Blair claims to read it, Said gives a rare shout of laughter: “No wonder he’s so confused!”His lack of belief in an afterlife is something he had to think about 10 years ago, when he discovered he had what he calls “a nasty, refractory form” of leukaemia “I had to face that problem when I first became ill Early on I discovered I wasn’t afraid of death I’ve faced it quite a lot during the last year. Twice in January I was taken to the emergency room as a result of backfiring of treatment I was very close to death What I really treasured most was lucidity and awareness. I’ve always refused sedatives during treatments.” These days, his restless intelligence even resists sleep, which he describes in his memoir as a form of death.He is waiting for an experimental treatment, which may become available later this month.

When I ask about his current projects, he reels off an exhausting list: three books, including one based on conversations with his great friend Daniel Barenboim. “My major book is on late style, the late phase of various authors – Shakespeare, Beethoven, Ibsen, Lampedusa,” he says. He has also started work on a novel.This would be a daunting schedule even for a healthy man But events have a way of intervening. “I keep getting called away to write articles about the war or something else,” he says regretfully.

If Said has recognised what he describes in one of his essays as the “inherent irreconcilability between intellectual belief and passionate loyalty to the tribe, sect and country,” the wider world has not. For his admirers and his detractors alike, this likeable, brilliant, vulnerable man is still a symbol of a cause and a people. Edward Said: Biography Edward Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935 to a Palestinian Christian family; his father had American citizenship. He was educated at Victoria College, Cairo, and at Princeton and Harvard Universities Since 1963 he has taught at Columbia University, New York. His first critical book was a study of Joseph Conrad in 1966, followed by Beginnings (1975), The World, the Text and the Critic (1983) and Culture and Imperialism (1993). His widely influential works on the cultural and political relationships between East and West began with Orientalism (1978), and also include Covering Islam (on the media) and The Question of Palestine In 1999 he published a memoir, Out of Place. He has also written extensively on music, and was the BBC Reith Lecturer in 1993.