“As for me, my hands are dirty. Right up to the elbows. I have plunged them in shit and blood.”

This statement by the head of the Communist Party in Sartre’s play Les Mains Sales (Dirty Hands) is now seen as a reiteration of Machiavelli’s 15th century maxim: anyone who enters the corridors of power must be prepared to come into contact with filth. “Dirty hands” became the 20th century metaphor for a condition when good ideals are ach