Madame Nhu, flashy, sharp-tongued former South Vietnam dignitary. Madame Nhu, who has died aged 87, was the archetypal "dragon lady" of Asian politics, a svelte and sinister woman who wielded immense power in the South Vietnamese regime of president Ngo Dinh Diem , her brother-in-law, until his assassination in 1963. She accumulated vast wealth and power, but was reviled for her puritanical social campaigns and her callous dismissal of Buddhist monks who burned themselves to death to protest against the brutal rule of Diem and her husband Ngo Dinh Nhu. "I would clap hands at seeing another monk barbecue show, for one cannot be responsible for the madness of others," she wrote in a letter to the New York Times. The world was stunned by photographs of monks sitting shrouded in flames; Madame Nhu simply offered to bring along some mustard for the next self-immolation. She later accused monks of lacking patriotism for setting themselves alight with imported petrol. ...