The dog ate my sandwich, and there was shrapnel all over the place from him tearing open the bag.

He and his business partner, Nur Ahmet Mahmut, 32, publish anything they can find, from Uighur history and literature to children’s stories and cookery books. They sell symbols of their hoped-for republic, East Turkestan — such as its sky blue flag with white crescent and star — items that are outlawed in China.

For a low-key, somewhat predictable meal, dinner at Basem's offers good value.

Even our modern services, I fear, are at times suspect in this respect, demanding degrees of literacy and bookmanship increasingly not found.