The concept of a national poet with the power to shape a national movement and define a country’s collective spirit seems to belong to a different century. But for Palestinians, who have yet to see their dreams of an independent state realised, it was embodied by Mahmoud Darwish.

None of them doubted that the poet, who died in the US last Saturday after a major heart operation, was Palestine’s national poet. But unlike the dead literary heroes of Europe he was accessible in every sense of the word.