Taki turns his fire on Black's 'absurd' outburst

Having attacked a close friend of his boss as a "cowardly draft dodger", Taki Theodoracopoulos might have been expected to choose his next target more carefully.

Not so. The right-wing columnist for The Spectator trained his fire yesterday on his employer, Lord Black of Crossharbour.

In a letter toThe Spectator, Taki responds to criticism from Lord Black last week of a piece he had written about Richard Perle. Mr Perle, a director of Lord Black's company, Hollinger, is credited with drawing up policy to topple Saddam Hussein. He was accused by Taki of avoiding the Vietnam draft. Lord Black wrote to the magazine, calling the article "absurdly offensive".

The Greek playboy has hit back. In this week's Spectator, he says he regrets his caricature of Mr Perle but accuses his boss of "getting personal" by attacking him for a lack of knowledge of military history. He says parallels drawn by his employer between Iraqi forces and Anglo-French Second World War armies are "quite absurd".