The sense that people who say they're offended have a right to have their offendedness assuaged."

The Booker Prize-winning novelist Salman Rushdie spoke out against a new "culture of offendedness" yesterday, saying that people increasingly "define ourselves by hate."

Professor Narbo had been offended, and great is the offendedness of a Full Professor, particularly when he is a Heidelberg Ph.D. and parts his hair all the way down the back.

Speaking to a sellout crowd on the opening day of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Midnight's Children author said: "I do think that one of the characteristics of our age is the growth of this culture of offendedness.