0:00:24 > 0:00:26Born just after the Second World War,
0:00:26 > 0:00:28David Hare has explored
0:00:28 > 0:00:31the private lives and the public lies of post-war Britain.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35In scripts for stage and screen including Plenty,
0:00:35 > 0:00:39about the disillusionment of a former female secret agent...
0:00:39 > 0:00:42What you are saying is that nobody may speak.
0:00:42 > 0:00:44Nobody may question.
0:00:44 > 0:00:48..Racing Demon, a drama about the Church of England...
0:00:48 > 0:00:54There are an awful lot of people round here in a very bad way.
0:00:54 > 0:00:58And they need SOMETHING, besides silence...
0:01:00 > 0:01:01..God.
0:01:03 > 0:01:06..and Stuff Happens, which imagines the conversations
0:01:06 > 0:01:10between Tony Blair and George W Bush, before the attack on Iraq.
0:01:12 > 0:01:15David Hare has also written the screenplays for movies
0:01:15 > 0:01:17including The Hours and The Reader...
0:01:17 > 0:01:19'A woman's whole life...
0:01:20 > 0:01:22'..in a single day.
0:01:24 > 0:01:26'Just one day.'
0:01:27 > 0:01:30..and has now dramatised his professional and personal past,
0:01:30 > 0:01:33in a frank memoir, The Blue Touch Paper.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47You've recently written an openly autobiographical play,
0:01:47 > 0:01:50South Downs, which was at least based on your schooldays
0:01:50 > 0:01:55and now there's a 320-page prose memoir, The Blue Touch Paper.
0:01:55 > 0:01:58Do you understand yourself better as a result of writing those two works?
0:01:58 > 0:02:01Oh, very much so, yes.
0:02:01 > 0:02:06I'd avoided autobiographical work generally for most of my life,
0:02:06 > 0:02:09and then the Terence Rattigan estate asked me to write a play
0:02:09 > 0:02:13to go with The Browning Version, about my own schooldays.
0:02:13 > 0:02:18And when I did that, first of all I found myself
0:02:18 > 0:02:21explaining to the cast of young people what Britain was like
0:02:21 > 0:02:24in the '50s and '60s - in the mid-century -
0:02:24 > 0:02:27and they were just totally disbelieving.
0:02:27 > 0:02:29And I did think, "Oh, we've travelled further than I realised."
0:02:29 > 0:02:32But also I got a lot of letters from people -
0:02:32 > 0:02:34not necessarily who'd been at school with me,
0:02:34 > 0:02:36though some of them had been at school with me -
0:02:36 > 0:02:39saying, "I can't put the past to bed,
0:02:39 > 0:02:42"and these things that the play is about still haunt me
0:02:42 > 0:02:45"and worry me and have shaped my whole life."
0:02:45 > 0:02:48So I found myself wanting to write a memoir.
0:02:48 > 0:02:50Which is interesting to me because
0:02:50 > 0:02:52you'd previously written about the generation before yours,
0:02:52 > 0:02:55the Second World War generation, and THEIR difficulty in
0:02:55 > 0:02:57escaping from their past
0:02:57 > 0:02:59but then you discovered it was true for your generation as well.
0:02:59 > 0:03:03Well, I think my parents brought me up
0:03:03 > 0:03:05to believe that I'd just missed the main event -
0:03:05 > 0:03:07the main event was the Second World War,
0:03:07 > 0:03:09and I hadn't been around for it.
0:03:09 > 0:03:13So people were behaving in this very mysterious way in the 1950s,
0:03:13 > 0:03:15because they were recovering.
0:03:15 > 0:03:20So that the words "nice" and "quiet" belonged together,
0:03:20 > 0:03:23whereas of course "nice" and "quiet" didn't belong together for me,
0:03:23 > 0:03:25because I hadn't been through what they had been through.
0:03:25 > 0:03:28But also South Downs the play, and the memoir, The Blue Touch Paper,
0:03:28 > 0:03:30made me think that
0:03:30 > 0:03:34the libel against the '50s for so long, that it was incredibly dull,
0:03:34 > 0:03:36I now understand was, as you say,
0:03:36 > 0:03:40a kind of deliberate therapeutic calm - I mean, people were in shock.
0:03:40 > 0:03:41People were in shock,
0:03:41 > 0:03:45but I was also being brought up in a very repressed environment.
0:03:45 > 0:03:49I was, you know, a suburban boy living in a semi-detached,
0:03:49 > 0:03:51first of all in Hastings, then in Bexhill,
0:03:51 > 0:03:55and so the two characteristics were both post-traumatic stress,
0:03:55 > 0:03:58which you noticed in a lot of the males,
0:03:58 > 0:04:02but obviously also people were just sexually haywire.
0:04:02 > 0:04:05Because, you know, they were living through
0:04:05 > 0:04:08a period in which the injunction "be yourself", which became
0:04:08 > 0:04:10so popular in the '60s and '70s,
0:04:10 > 0:04:14would have meant absolutely nothing - be what, exactly?
0:04:14 > 0:04:17Our next-door neighbour on the other side of the semi-detached
0:04:17 > 0:04:18killed herself.
0:04:18 > 0:04:21And she killed herself, she walked into the sea.
0:04:21 > 0:04:23She took off all her clothes and walked into the sea,
0:04:23 > 0:04:25which in Bexhill, if you know Bexhill,
0:04:25 > 0:04:28is a peculiarly powerful thing to do.
0:04:28 > 0:04:32It's a hugely symbolic way to kill yourself,
0:04:32 > 0:04:36to walk into that slate-grey sea down that cold shore.
0:04:36 > 0:04:39And it was, and I know it was,
0:04:39 > 0:04:41out of a kind of
0:04:41 > 0:04:45atmosphere of repression and inability to be allowed
0:04:45 > 0:04:49to express yourself or say anything about what you are feeling
0:04:49 > 0:04:51that made her kill herself.
0:04:51 > 0:04:54And so the escape from that,
0:04:54 > 0:04:57you know, the cultural change whereby you ARE allowed
0:04:57 > 0:05:00to talk about your feelings now in...
0:05:00 > 0:05:03you know, you can satirise the excess of it,
0:05:03 > 0:05:06but oh, my goodness, that is so much better
0:05:06 > 0:05:09than the unhappiness that was so cruel
0:05:09 > 0:05:13in that atmosphere of suburban conformity.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17And it's nothing but benefit that we've escaped from it.
0:05:17 > 0:05:19So later, when you came to write The Hours...
0:05:19 > 0:05:21Obviously very different things, different class,
0:05:21 > 0:05:24but the Virginia Woolf suicide scene, that must have come back...
0:05:24 > 0:05:26That's such an interesting question.
0:05:26 > 0:05:31Because actually when Toni Collette came into Julianne Moore's...
0:05:31 > 0:05:33And one of the reasons I wanted to write The Hours
0:05:33 > 0:05:36was that Julianne Moore's character
0:05:36 > 0:05:39leaves her children, and that is still a taboo -
0:05:39 > 0:05:41the mother who leaves her children behind.
0:05:41 > 0:05:44That was the only reason Julianne wanted to do the film,
0:05:44 > 0:05:48she said, "I want to address that taboo."
0:05:48 > 0:05:50And Toni Collette plays the next-door neighbour
0:05:50 > 0:05:51in suburban Los Angeles in the 1950s.
0:05:53 > 0:05:54Hello?
0:05:55 > 0:05:58Hello? Laura?
0:05:58 > 0:06:02- Hi, Kitty.- Hi. Am I interrupting? - Oh, of course not, come in.
0:06:02 > 0:06:03Are you all right?
0:06:03 > 0:06:05Why, sure.
0:06:05 > 0:06:07Hi, Richie!
0:06:07 > 0:06:09Sit down, I've got coffee on.
0:06:09 > 0:06:11- Um...would you like some? - Mm. Please.
0:06:12 > 0:06:15Oh, look. You made a cake.
0:06:15 > 0:06:16I know.
0:06:16 > 0:06:18Didn't work.
0:06:18 > 0:06:20I thought it was going to work.
0:06:20 > 0:06:23I thought it would work better than that.
0:06:23 > 0:06:25- SHE CHUCKLES - Oh, Laura, I don't understand
0:06:25 > 0:06:26why you find it so difficult.
0:06:26 > 0:06:29- I don't know either. - Anyone can make a cake!- I know.
0:06:29 > 0:06:32Everyone can. It's ridiculously easy.
0:06:32 > 0:06:36When Toni started acting, I was completely freaked.
0:06:36 > 0:06:38And I said to her,
0:06:38 > 0:06:41"How do you KNOW what women were like in the 1950s?
0:06:41 > 0:06:44"Because you are giving an absolutely perfect imitation
0:06:44 > 0:06:49"of everybody who ever came round to tea at my mother's."
0:06:49 > 0:06:50And she said, "I don't know,
0:06:50 > 0:06:52"I'm just guessing it must've been like that."
0:06:52 > 0:06:55But the mannerisms, the clothes, the hair -
0:06:55 > 0:06:59everything was the atmosphere of those women of that time.
0:06:59 > 0:07:01Keeping everything nice,
0:07:01 > 0:07:04but sensing that while you're keeping everything nice,
0:07:04 > 0:07:07underneath, people were simmering
0:07:07 > 0:07:10with a discontent that they neither understood nor could express.
0:07:12 > 0:07:14Does Ray have a birthday?
0:07:14 > 0:07:15KITTY LAUGHS
0:07:15 > 0:07:16Sure he does.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19- When is it?- September. We go to the country club.
0:07:19 > 0:07:21We always go to the country club.
0:07:21 > 0:07:24We drink martinis, and spend the day with 50 people.
0:07:24 > 0:07:26Ray's got a lot of friends.
0:07:26 > 0:07:28Oh...he does.
0:07:28 > 0:07:31You both have a lot of friends. You're good at it.
0:07:34 > 0:07:37How IS Ray? I haven't seen him in a while.
0:07:37 > 0:07:39Ray's fine. Mm.
0:07:40 > 0:07:43I was quite shocked by how hard it seemed to me
0:07:43 > 0:07:45you are on yourself in the memoir.
0:07:45 > 0:07:48These are just a few of the phrases you use about yourself -
0:07:48 > 0:07:51"a nasty little boy" on page 28
0:07:51 > 0:07:55"my own deep certainty that I was unlikeable" a few pages later.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59"I still hated myself" on page 78, on page 203 you're "insufferable".
0:07:59 > 0:08:02On page 206 "hugely disliked",
0:08:02 > 0:08:07and on page 222 "a pretty unpleasant person".
0:08:07 > 0:08:10I don't think I've ever read a memoir by a politician or a sports star
0:08:10 > 0:08:13in which they use ONE of those terms about themselves.
0:08:13 > 0:08:18I think that as a playwright you are speculating,
0:08:18 > 0:08:20and you put out a play,
0:08:20 > 0:08:25and you say, "This is what I feel, does anybody else recognise this?"
0:08:25 > 0:08:27And you get a response.
0:08:27 > 0:08:31So that, you know, when I write what's called a successful play,
0:08:31 > 0:08:34that usually means that enough members of the audience say,
0:08:34 > 0:08:37"At last, somebody is saying exactly what I'm thinking and feeling.
0:08:37 > 0:08:41"I am not mad, I'm not alone in feeling this."
0:08:41 > 0:08:44When I write an unsuccessful play, it's usually because
0:08:44 > 0:08:48I've said something about what I feel, and nobody else recognises it.
0:08:48 > 0:08:52Now, these feelings of self-hatred, which have...
0:08:52 > 0:08:54which drove my life for many years
0:08:54 > 0:08:56and particularly during the period of the book,
0:08:56 > 0:08:58I believe are common to many people.
0:08:58 > 0:09:01If people don't recognise self-hatred
0:09:01 > 0:09:03or know anything about it,
0:09:03 > 0:09:06then they'll just say, "Is this man a lunatic?
0:09:06 > 0:09:08"What IS this experience?"
0:09:08 > 0:09:11But I've had enough responses to the book
0:09:11 > 0:09:15to know that an awful lot of people are not strangers to self-hatred.
0:09:15 > 0:09:18I mean, I think that the process
0:09:18 > 0:09:22of becoming a playwright did involve, erm...
0:09:22 > 0:09:26toughening myself up in ways which were often quite ruthless.
0:09:26 > 0:09:29I was born into a generation that followed Dennis Potter
0:09:29 > 0:09:33and David Mercer and Harold Pinter and John Osborne.
0:09:33 > 0:09:35They were all ornery, difficult people,
0:09:35 > 0:09:38because playwriting does involve
0:09:38 > 0:09:42a great deal of public humiliation.
0:09:42 > 0:09:44And I think that in the 1970s,
0:09:44 > 0:09:47when the country was arguing about everything, and the culture
0:09:47 > 0:09:51was arguing about everything, they were trying to throttle us at birth.
0:09:51 > 0:09:52We had enemies.
0:09:52 > 0:09:57And that, to me... And the book is partly a defence of the 1970s,
0:09:57 > 0:10:01and saying disputatious times can also be very creative times.
0:10:01 > 0:10:05And the things that the culture was arguing about and the things
0:10:05 > 0:10:08that the country were arguing about were very, very important things.
0:10:08 > 0:10:13Bernard Levin wasn't a critic, he was an enemy. He wanted...
0:10:13 > 0:10:16He famously wrote, "I wish David Hare would just go away."
0:10:16 > 0:10:20And so that's what we were facing, and if that made us
0:10:20 > 0:10:24ornery in response to that, who'd be surprised?
0:10:24 > 0:10:27Were you a poet or were you a novelist,
0:10:27 > 0:10:31there might well be humiliations in sales figures,
0:10:31 > 0:10:33but nobody ever really knows, or is aware of them,
0:10:33 > 0:10:36whereas if someone's play comes off after three days,
0:10:36 > 0:10:39or it's booed, or there's no-one in the audience...
0:10:39 > 0:10:42I mean, Simon Gray, the late Simon Gray wrote about ringing up
0:10:42 > 0:10:46the theatre and asking if they had any tickets for tonight
0:10:46 > 0:10:49and they said, "Yes, you can have any seat you want."
0:10:49 > 0:10:53I mean, those kind of things don't happen to novelists or poets.
0:10:53 > 0:10:55Yeah. I mean, there was a wonderful incident
0:10:55 > 0:10:57at the Nottingham Playhouse,
0:10:57 > 0:11:01when Brassneck was on, where we were told that the woman who ran
0:11:01 > 0:11:04the box office, when people rang and asked for tickets for Brassneck,
0:11:04 > 0:11:08which was a play by me and Howard Brenton, that she told them,
0:11:08 > 0:11:11"Oh, you don't want to come to that."
0:11:11 > 0:11:13So, we did indeed try this out.
0:11:13 > 0:11:16Howard and I rang the box office, and we did get this response.
0:11:16 > 0:11:19She said, "Are you sure you want a ticket for this?
0:11:19 > 0:11:21"It's not very good, you know."
0:11:21 > 0:11:23I argued to Richard Eyre, who was running
0:11:23 > 0:11:26the Nottingham Playhouse, that he had to sack the box office manager.
0:11:26 > 0:11:28I said, "If you have a box office manager
0:11:28 > 0:11:29"who tells people not to come..."
0:11:29 > 0:11:31And Richard, perfectly plausibly, said,
0:11:31 > 0:11:34"Well, you may regard it as just quality control,
0:11:34 > 0:11:37"and maybe the audience is grateful to her!"
0:11:37 > 0:11:38He refused to sack her.
0:11:38 > 0:11:41You say you have always had too easy access to anger.
0:11:41 > 0:11:42There's a very funny...
0:11:42 > 0:11:46not funny for you, but funny for the reader, moment where,
0:11:46 > 0:11:49on one of your early plays, you sacked the director, in effect,
0:11:49 > 0:11:53and taken over but, for appearances, he's allowed to still be
0:11:53 > 0:11:56in the rehearsal room, and then you fall out terribly with
0:11:56 > 0:12:00the producer of the play, and you say you had to go through rehearsals
0:12:00 > 0:12:04without catching the eye of either the producer or the director.
0:12:04 > 0:12:07And on other occasions... You took on
0:12:07 > 0:12:11Frank Rich, the critic of the New York Times, you took him on publicly,
0:12:11 > 0:12:14so some of it is self-inflicted.
0:12:14 > 0:12:17No, I don't agree. I think that what I say,
0:12:17 > 0:12:19in the actual quote in the book, I know, is that
0:12:19 > 0:12:24I have too easy an access to anger but not always on my own behalf,
0:12:24 > 0:12:27as much on other people's behalf as on my own.
0:12:27 > 0:12:30And I've spent an awful lot of time fighting causes
0:12:30 > 0:12:33on other people's behalf, as much as on my own.
0:12:33 > 0:12:39I don't think of my anger as a product of self-pity.
0:12:39 > 0:12:45I think of my anger as an openness to power being abused.
0:12:45 > 0:12:47That's what I can't stand.
0:12:47 > 0:12:52And that's what makes me angry on other people's behalf.
0:12:52 > 0:12:56There's a startling moment in the memoir, to me...
0:12:56 > 0:13:00In fact, you are working on one of the early plays of Chekhov, and you
0:13:00 > 0:13:05discover a Russian word in Chekhov that translates as "fatherlessness",
0:13:05 > 0:13:08and that resonates through the book, as you must know,
0:13:08 > 0:13:10because that is what YOU felt.
0:13:10 > 0:13:14Well, of course, my father was away for most of the year.
0:13:14 > 0:13:15He was a sailor.
0:13:15 > 0:13:18So, 11 months of the year, he just wasn't there?
0:13:18 > 0:13:20And for the month that he was there,
0:13:20 > 0:13:25he was strangely indifferent to his children! To my sister and me.
0:13:25 > 0:13:27So, you know, I've read people...
0:13:27 > 0:13:31psychologists who claim that fatherlessness is the classic
0:13:31 > 0:13:34condition of people who become writers.
0:13:34 > 0:13:38It certainly is wounding.
0:13:38 > 0:13:40Damaging.
0:13:40 > 0:13:45You know, I was brought up by women and I missed a father,
0:13:45 > 0:13:49but worse than missing a father, I was really
0:13:49 > 0:13:53hurt by the fact that he had no interest in me or my sister.
0:13:53 > 0:13:56But in the rhythm of that year, when you were growing up,
0:13:56 > 0:13:59I mean, the word "plenty", which you use, memorably, for a title,
0:13:59 > 0:14:03but it's, again, a startling thing that you would have
0:14:03 > 0:14:08this 1950s South Coast life, which was fairly modest,
0:14:08 > 0:14:14and then he would descend with a great roll of banknotes,
0:14:14 > 0:14:16and there would be all these treats.
0:14:16 > 0:14:19A great roll of banknotes, and there would be steak suddenly,
0:14:19 > 0:14:23we'd go to the Star Cafe in Hastings to have steak, and then he'd
0:14:23 > 0:14:29tell us about how he'd seen Kay Starr or Lena Horne in cabaret
0:14:29 > 0:14:31in Aden or...
0:14:31 > 0:14:36He'd been to Fremantle, and he also had stuff,
0:14:36 > 0:14:40presumably stuff that had come out of the larder.
0:14:40 > 0:14:43He'd have a whole lamb from New Zealand that he'd brought home,
0:14:43 > 0:14:47or pineapple from the Pacific, and he just poured
0:14:47 > 0:14:51abundance into our lives and then disappeared again.
0:14:51 > 0:14:54Your mother has a very striking line of dialogue in the book.
0:14:54 > 0:14:57She would often say, "I love you but I don't like you."
0:14:57 > 0:14:59Now, how do you unpick that line?
0:14:59 > 0:15:01- How do I unpick it?- Hmm.
0:15:01 > 0:15:05She didn't think I was very nice, I think.
0:15:05 > 0:15:07Wow. I mean, is this...
0:15:07 > 0:15:10As I say, you are incredibly frank about all this in the book,
0:15:10 > 0:15:14and hard on yourself, but you realised that at the time, did you?
0:15:14 > 0:15:18I think that I was very, very uncomfortable
0:15:18 > 0:15:21because I could not understand...
0:15:22 > 0:15:26You know, children have a highly-developed radar,
0:15:26 > 0:15:29meaning that they have the same radar as we do,
0:15:29 > 0:15:32in terms of looking around and trying to interpret
0:15:32 > 0:15:36what's around them, but they lack the means to interpret it,
0:15:36 > 0:15:40because they lack the models with which to interpret it.
0:15:40 > 0:15:43I've met a lot of, say, angry men in my life,
0:15:43 > 0:15:47so when a man gets angry, I go, "Oh, this is like such and such."
0:15:47 > 0:15:50But as a child, you're encountering all that for the first time,
0:15:50 > 0:15:54and I was trying to interpret some very strange behaviour around me,
0:15:54 > 0:16:00both in the town that I lived in and in the family that I was born into.
0:16:00 > 0:16:02There's also a class translation...
0:16:02 > 0:16:05A lot of writers in the past, they would be lifted
0:16:05 > 0:16:10from working class to middle or upper by going to university.
0:16:10 > 0:16:11Now, it happened earlier for you
0:16:11 > 0:16:13because you got a scholarship to Lancing,
0:16:13 > 0:16:15so in those terrible English distinctions,
0:16:15 > 0:16:18- the Hares were lower middle class? - Yeah.- Yeah.
0:16:18 > 0:16:22But then you went to a posh school and that, clearly, has been
0:16:22 > 0:16:26- crucial to your plays and, I assume, to you?- Yes.
0:16:26 > 0:16:28In other words, I went to Lancing
0:16:28 > 0:16:31and I learned to speak the way I now speak, because my accent was not...
0:16:31 > 0:16:34How would you have sounded before Lancing?
0:16:34 > 0:16:36Well, as I say, I think, in a way,
0:16:36 > 0:16:39that in Bexhill was quite highfalutin,
0:16:39 > 0:16:42but which did not pass in Lancing.
0:16:42 > 0:16:44My vowels needed to be cleared up
0:16:44 > 0:16:46and I needed to acquire some consonants,
0:16:46 > 0:16:49which I acquired as camouflage.
0:16:49 > 0:16:53Was there a sort of financial apartheid, racism?
0:16:53 > 0:16:55- Were people aware of who was scholarship boy?- Yeah.
0:16:55 > 0:16:58And I was aware that I was there on a scholarship,
0:16:58 > 0:17:01and that I had much less money than most of the boys there.
0:17:01 > 0:17:05Most of the boys had tuckboxes crammed with food that was
0:17:05 > 0:17:08regularly arriving, to compensate for the appalling diet
0:17:08 > 0:17:11that was offered at Lancing in those days.
0:17:11 > 0:17:13Journalists, biographers, interviewers
0:17:13 > 0:17:15are always looking for key formative moments.
0:17:15 > 0:17:18Age of nine, you are taken to Glyndebourne,
0:17:18 > 0:17:21curiously enough the setting for your forthcoming play,
0:17:21 > 0:17:24The Moderate Soprano, which is about the history of that opera house.
0:17:24 > 0:17:27Opera wasn't on when you went at the age of nine,
0:17:27 > 0:17:30there was drama on, but it does seem to me that was a significant moment.
0:17:30 > 0:17:34Yeah. My mother took me to Glyndebourne for the amateur acting.
0:17:34 > 0:17:37Actually, when I was researching the play about Glyndebourne, I was
0:17:37 > 0:17:41able to identify when exactly I had gone, and to what I had been,
0:17:41 > 0:17:46though the play, maybe your viewers will know what the play is,
0:17:46 > 0:17:49it's a play about Shakespeare being caught in a trunk.
0:17:49 > 0:17:52I thought it was by Bernard Shaw, but I don't think it was.
0:17:52 > 0:17:55But there's absolutely no doubt that,
0:17:55 > 0:17:58although it was a flop, it captured my imagination in some way,
0:17:58 > 0:18:01and I thought, "God, that would be immense fun,
0:18:01 > 0:18:03"to write for the theatre."
0:18:03 > 0:18:06And then, later on, when you're 13, you're on a trip in London
0:18:06 > 0:18:10and you go in to see The Caretaker by Harold Pinter,
0:18:10 > 0:18:13who would subsequently become your friend. Again, that instinct,
0:18:13 > 0:18:15because you don't gloss it at all in the book, that instinct to
0:18:15 > 0:18:20go in and see that play, there was something about theatre, even then.
0:18:20 > 0:18:23Yes. Very, very young and I was given by my mother,
0:18:23 > 0:18:25which I say in the book,
0:18:25 > 0:18:27an extraordinary degree of independence.
0:18:27 > 0:18:30In other words, I got the train to London by myself,
0:18:30 > 0:18:33at the age of 13, wandered the streets of London alone at 13,
0:18:33 > 0:18:37went in to see this play called The Caretaker, sat in the balcony,
0:18:37 > 0:18:40up goes the curtain and there is, standing,
0:18:40 > 0:18:43Alan Bates, and he is wearing - I can see it now -
0:18:43 > 0:18:46he's wearing leather jackets and he's wearing jeans.
0:18:46 > 0:18:51And he just was the most alluring, exciting..
0:18:53 > 0:18:57..riveting young man, of a kind I'd never seen in Bexhill.
0:18:57 > 0:19:01And you were just instantly into a sort of sensuality
0:19:01 > 0:19:08and sharpness and danger that your own life lacked, and off I went.
0:19:08 > 0:19:10So, both your parents, in their different ways,
0:19:10 > 0:19:12were quite inattentive to you.
0:19:12 > 0:19:17I mean, your mother was happy for you to go off, and your dad wasn't there.
0:19:17 > 0:19:19I think my mother was determined that,
0:19:19 > 0:19:21although she feared for me,
0:19:21 > 0:19:23she would nevertheless allow me the freedom,
0:19:23 > 0:19:25the maximum possible freedom,
0:19:25 > 0:19:29and that, I think, is the greatest gift she gave me.
0:19:29 > 0:19:31Cambridge you didn't, in general, enjoy.
0:19:31 > 0:19:34I mean, it was not a happy experience.
0:19:34 > 0:19:36Well, except I learned to direct.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39Or rather, I had my first experience of directing a play.
0:19:39 > 0:19:43It's something that I encourage everybody to experiment
0:19:43 > 0:19:45when they're young,
0:19:45 > 0:19:48because you may discover a gift in yourself that you don't know.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51My life has been the discovery of only three gifts,
0:19:51 > 0:19:56but each one of them, I had no sense that I could do it until I did it.
0:19:56 > 0:19:59Directing plays was the first one.
0:19:59 > 0:20:01I had no intimation that I was going to be able to write,
0:20:01 > 0:20:03and I didn't do that for some years,
0:20:03 > 0:20:05and then directing film was something
0:20:05 > 0:20:08I turned out to be able to do but, again, I had no sense of it.
0:20:08 > 0:20:10People talk about the privilege of Cambridge.
0:20:10 > 0:20:13You had the expected one of Alfred Hitchcock coming to
0:20:13 > 0:20:15talk to you, which you say a few times in the book,
0:20:15 > 0:20:18that if you...at that stage, if you ask for stuff,
0:20:18 > 0:20:21you sometimes got it because they were surprised,
0:20:21 > 0:20:23- but he just turned up?- Yes.
0:20:23 > 0:20:25I was running the film society.
0:20:25 > 0:20:28Dick Arnold was the president of the film society, I was the secretary.
0:20:28 > 0:20:30We had the wheeze of asking Hitchcock
0:20:30 > 0:20:32and, much to our amazement, he came,
0:20:32 > 0:20:34and I would say, retrospectively,
0:20:34 > 0:20:36he was the first great artist with whom
0:20:36 > 0:20:38I got to spend any length of time,
0:20:38 > 0:20:42and because he turned up at one o'clock and wanted lunch,
0:20:42 > 0:20:45and he didn't have to speak till five or five-thirty,
0:20:45 > 0:20:46I can't remember,
0:20:46 > 0:20:49then four or five of us had the privilege of spending
0:20:49 > 0:20:53four hours with him, while he talked freely about the films he had made.
0:20:53 > 0:20:55And, so, that, you can imagine,
0:20:55 > 0:20:58for a schoolboy, it was just incredible - sorry, a student,
0:20:58 > 0:21:00an undergraduate.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03It was it was just incredible to be alone with Alfred Hitchcock,
0:21:03 > 0:21:07and this fount of sort of anecdote
0:21:07 > 0:21:12and self-deprecation and charm, really.
0:21:12 > 0:21:15- Was he anecdotal at a technical level?- Completely.
0:21:15 > 0:21:17And as he said,
0:21:17 > 0:21:20the fact that he spent however many hours talking to this young
0:21:20 > 0:21:24Frenchman called Francois Truffaut, as he said,
0:21:24 > 0:21:27"This man Truffaut," he kept saying, you know,
0:21:27 > 0:21:30he had his thoughts in an extraordinary orderly way,
0:21:30 > 0:21:32because he had been made to think about...
0:21:32 > 0:21:34But he was an orderly man anyway.
0:21:34 > 0:21:37And, you know, certain anecdotes were extremely polished
0:21:37 > 0:21:39but some were off the record.
0:21:39 > 0:21:42If you asked him the question, he'd...he'd answer frankly.
0:21:42 > 0:21:44Although you haven't acted professionally,
0:21:44 > 0:21:47apart from a monologue - at Cambridge, you did have
0:21:47 > 0:21:52an outing as an actor, playing one of two tall identical twins.
0:21:52 > 0:21:55I had a physical similarity to Richard Cork,
0:21:55 > 0:21:58who later became the art critic of the Times,
0:21:58 > 0:22:04and so inspired director Steve Gooch decided to do Comedy Of Errors
0:22:04 > 0:22:08and put us in as the two Antipholuses, Syracuse and Ephesus,
0:22:08 > 0:22:12and I'm afraid, for the record, I can't remember which one I played.
0:22:12 > 0:22:15Although, amazingly, film survives,
0:22:15 > 0:22:18because Stephen Wright, who was one of the Dromios,
0:22:18 > 0:22:21he shot some film and then discovered it many years later.
0:22:21 > 0:22:25It's a very rare opportunity to be able to see your young self,
0:22:25 > 0:22:30and I was quite shocked at how we all have
0:22:30 > 0:22:33what I call the physical lexicon of Monty Python.
0:22:33 > 0:22:39In other words, as young men, we were as clumsy, gauche,
0:22:39 > 0:22:43awkward, embarrassed, shy...
0:22:44 > 0:22:46..messing around all the time,
0:22:46 > 0:22:49larking about in a way which seems incredibly self-conscious
0:22:49 > 0:22:51and incredibly uneasy.
0:22:51 > 0:22:54For the first time in this long series, I always wanted to,
0:22:54 > 0:22:59I am going to produce a cricket manual here and the reason is
0:22:59 > 0:23:04that in the records for the county of Essex, here it is,
0:23:04 > 0:23:08"The highest partnership for each wicket, the ninth wicket,
0:23:08 > 0:23:12"251, JWHT Douglas and, more importantly,
0:23:12 > 0:23:17"SM Hare versus Derbyshire Leyton, 1921."
0:23:17 > 0:23:19Now, when you look at all the others,
0:23:19 > 0:23:22most of the other records are 1994, 2010, they've all been superseded,
0:23:22 > 0:23:27- but that is your uncle. - That is my uncle Eric. Yeah.
0:23:27 > 0:23:29I mean, you can see what it means to me.
0:23:29 > 0:23:32It must be rather a wonderful thing,
0:23:32 > 0:23:34to have not just Playfair but Wisden, which is the bigger one.
0:23:34 > 0:23:37- He's in there, as well. - Oh, he is in Wisden.
0:23:37 > 0:23:39Let's not make any mistake about that.
0:23:39 > 0:23:43No, but everybody who played cricket at St Paul's, where he was,
0:23:43 > 0:23:45because he was born in 1900,
0:23:45 > 0:23:47each year, the first XI played,
0:23:47 > 0:23:51and each year, three or four of that first XI would die in the trenches,
0:23:51 > 0:23:54so my uncle told me that in 1918,
0:23:54 > 0:23:56when he played in the first XI,
0:23:56 > 0:24:01he expected to go off and be killed, and he said, "You simply accepted
0:24:01 > 0:24:02"the fact that the chances were
0:24:02 > 0:24:05"that you were playing cricket that summer,
0:24:05 > 0:24:08"and there was a high chance that you would be dead within the year."
0:24:08 > 0:24:10But because it was '18,
0:24:10 > 0:24:13by November there was an amnesty and so he was spared,
0:24:13 > 0:24:17and I said to him, "How did people accept that?"
0:24:17 > 0:24:20And he said, "Even now, I can't explain it to you.
0:24:20 > 0:24:26"I can only tell you that was the mind-set, and nobody that I knew..."
0:24:26 > 0:24:27and he was talking about
0:24:27 > 0:24:29a conventional middle-class background,
0:24:29 > 0:24:31"..dissented from it."
0:24:31 > 0:24:34And he said, "I can't explain to you how that was."
0:24:34 > 0:24:37And I find it unimaginable how young men accepted that
0:24:37 > 0:24:40that they were going to go and be killed.
0:24:40 > 0:24:42Another slight mystery, a more trivial one,
0:24:42 > 0:24:45but it has always fascinated me is English playwrights and cricket,
0:24:45 > 0:24:47because Harold Pinter had his own cricket team, I think
0:24:47 > 0:24:49it still exists to this day,
0:24:49 > 0:24:51Tom Stoppard would keep wicket.
0:24:51 > 0:24:53They say, in journalism, you need three for a trend,
0:24:53 > 0:24:55and it's way beyond these here.
0:24:55 > 0:24:57Simon Gray loved cricket, Ronald Harwood loves cricket,
0:24:57 > 0:25:00You do. It goes on and on. There are various theories.
0:25:00 > 0:25:03Some people have said that a five-day test match,
0:25:03 > 0:25:06five-day dramatic structure in Shakespeare.
0:25:06 > 0:25:08I don't know. It's a mild obsession of mine.
0:25:08 > 0:25:10I think it's to do... It's the rhythms.
0:25:10 > 0:25:14Proper cricket is so long, there are sub plots,
0:25:14 > 0:25:16there are incredible switches...
0:25:16 > 0:25:18That's a very good theory.
0:25:18 > 0:25:20I think it's democratic, also.
0:25:20 > 0:25:22I think that, you know, the fact
0:25:22 > 0:25:25that whatever social background you can come from...
0:25:25 > 0:25:29By and large, football is a working-class game,
0:25:29 > 0:25:32but the toffs play cricket in one way, the middle class play it
0:25:32 > 0:25:37in another, and then, what used to be called the players...
0:25:37 > 0:25:38Famously, at Lord's,
0:25:38 > 0:25:41gentlemen and players came in through different gates onto the pitch.
0:25:41 > 0:25:43That's right. And so there's that element
0:25:43 > 0:25:46and also, there's the element that anybody at any point can shine,
0:25:46 > 0:25:49so the number 11 batsman may suddenly be
0:25:49 > 0:25:52the star of the day, because he holds out to the end
0:25:52 > 0:25:55and gets the draw under impossible circumstances,
0:25:55 > 0:25:58and that, clearly, is the same with the theatre.
0:25:58 > 0:26:00It has to be collaborative with theatre.
0:26:00 > 0:26:03The assistant stage manager is just as important as the director,
0:26:03 > 0:26:07and at a crucial moment will save the play from disaster.
0:26:07 > 0:26:11The person playing the maid will come in and save the evening
0:26:11 > 0:26:12when something is wrong.
0:26:12 > 0:26:15And I think that sense of collaboration,
0:26:15 > 0:26:19where you do know that you're part of something bigger than yourself,
0:26:19 > 0:26:24that's what a play is. And so a cricket game is that as well.
0:26:24 > 0:26:27Now, that's fascinating, because you have directed many plays
0:26:27 > 0:26:30- but it's the same thing, isn't it, that within a team structure...- Yeah.
0:26:30 > 0:26:32..you have to accommodate superstars?
0:26:32 > 0:26:34So, you don't have to name them,
0:26:34 > 0:26:38but in the theatre, there must be Kevin Pietersens, Geoffrey Boycotts
0:26:38 > 0:26:42- and so on, and yet the director has to fit them into the team.- Yeah.
0:26:42 > 0:26:43But it's more than that.
0:26:43 > 0:26:49I think that there is a genuine difference in the leading actor
0:26:49 > 0:26:52to the other actors, and there is generally
0:26:52 > 0:26:55a level of neurosis that is greater than it is for the other actors
0:26:55 > 0:26:59because of the sense, both of who they are in relation
0:26:59 > 0:27:02to their past and what the public knows them to be,
0:27:02 > 0:27:04and to the amount of responsibility that they
0:27:04 > 0:27:08are carrying in the play, and if, like me, you love leading parts,
0:27:08 > 0:27:13and I've written more leading parts than most contemporary playwrights.
0:27:13 > 0:27:17In other words, I've written for stars, what are called stars -
0:27:17 > 0:27:22to do their star thing in them, because I absolutely love that,
0:27:22 > 0:27:28but the test of a director is the ability to direct stars,
0:27:28 > 0:27:31because it is a different thing from directing actors.
0:27:31 > 0:27:36By stars, I don't mean very famous people, I mean people who take on
0:27:36 > 0:27:38massive stage roles,
0:27:38 > 0:27:42and the struggle that goes with playing a big stage role.
0:27:42 > 0:27:45I was one of the people lucky enough to have seen Anthony Hopkins
0:27:45 > 0:27:47in Pravda, written with Howard Brenton,
0:27:47 > 0:27:50directed by you at the National Theatre.
0:27:50 > 0:27:53To see Anthony Hopkins playing Lambert Le Roux,
0:27:53 > 0:27:56the South African newspaper tycoon in that,
0:27:56 > 0:28:01it's on a different level to anything that anyone else can do.
0:28:01 > 0:28:05- They go into a zone where somehow something else is happening.- Yeah.
0:28:05 > 0:28:09I think it's a major criticism of the National Theatre,
0:28:09 > 0:28:14that it has to be where those great actors give those performances,
0:28:14 > 0:28:16and yet, truthfully,
0:28:16 > 0:28:20Mark Rylance in Jerusalem excites an audience
0:28:20 > 0:28:23in a way nothing else excites them, you know.
0:28:23 > 0:28:26People remember for ever,
0:28:26 > 0:28:29"I saw Mark Rylance play..." What is he called?
0:28:29 > 0:28:32- Rooster, I think. - Yeah, in Jez Butterworth's...
0:28:32 > 0:28:36And it burns into them in a very profound way,
0:28:36 > 0:28:40and the fact that the National Theatre is not, these days,
0:28:40 > 0:28:43so much organised around the principle
0:28:43 > 0:28:47that it's there for the greatest actors of the day,
0:28:47 > 0:28:51to give the great performances, I think is a shame.
0:28:51 > 0:28:54When Laurence Olivier ran it, it was obviously too much that way.
0:28:54 > 0:28:56In other words,
0:28:56 > 0:28:58it was ONLY about what could Laurence Olivier do,
0:28:58 > 0:29:02or what could Maggie Smith do or what could Tony Hopkins do,
0:29:02 > 0:29:05but on the other hand, it's got to be the place
0:29:05 > 0:29:08where these great performances are given.
0:29:08 > 0:29:12Truth? Why, when every way you go, people tell lies in pubs,
0:29:12 > 0:29:16to each other, to their husbands, to their wives,
0:29:16 > 0:29:18to their children, to the dying!
0:29:18 > 0:29:21And thank God they do!
0:29:21 > 0:29:23No-one tells the truth!
0:29:23 > 0:29:25Although another example,
0:29:25 > 0:29:27which might be relevant here in a different way,
0:29:27 > 0:29:31is The Blue Room, which you adapted from La Ronde, by Schnitzler,
0:29:31 > 0:29:32and Nicole Kidman gave
0:29:32 > 0:29:35a still-talked-about performance in that,
0:29:35 > 0:29:39but that's something else that happens in theatre now.
0:29:39 > 0:29:41I mean, with respect to the text,
0:29:41 > 0:29:45it isn't a huge role in the way that Lambert Le Roux is.
0:29:45 > 0:29:48It was about people seeing HER, wasn't it?
0:29:48 > 0:29:51Nicole Kidman is in front of you, on stage.
0:29:51 > 0:29:55Yeah. I mean, it was a sandstorm of publicity,
0:29:55 > 0:29:58and it clearly got completely out of control,
0:29:58 > 0:30:00to a point where, in New York,
0:30:00 > 0:30:02it was occasionally quite frightening,
0:30:02 > 0:30:05the sheer number of thousands of people in the street waiting
0:30:05 > 0:30:07for her to come out of the stage door,
0:30:07 > 0:30:11and both Sam Mendes and I felt that this rather fragile, sweet,
0:30:11 > 0:30:14nice play was, you know,
0:30:14 > 0:30:17at the centre of something where it was impossible to see
0:30:17 > 0:30:20the play any longer, because of what it was. However, the crucial point
0:30:20 > 0:30:24about Nicole Kidman in The Blue Room was that she was bloody good in it.
0:30:24 > 0:30:26She was really good,
0:30:26 > 0:30:28And she was giving what you would call a star performance,
0:30:28 > 0:30:31meaning you could not take your eyes off her.
0:30:31 > 0:30:34She was completely fascinating in the role.
0:30:34 > 0:30:39And so that... I do dislike it when I get blamed
0:30:39 > 0:30:43because of The Blue Room, for, you know, celebrities in theatre.
0:30:43 > 0:30:46There have been celebrities in the theatre for ever,
0:30:46 > 0:30:49meaning, when I was young, they were just boring celebrities.
0:30:49 > 0:30:51In other words, they were Claudette Colbert
0:30:51 > 0:30:54and Charlton Heston doing seasons at the Haymarket
0:30:54 > 0:30:57of boring old plays by Frederick Lonsdale.
0:30:57 > 0:30:58September 1968,
0:30:58 > 0:31:01the first professional David Hare play was staged -
0:31:01 > 0:31:03Inside Out, adapted from Kafka's Diaries.
0:31:03 > 0:31:07Produced by Portable Theatre, a company that you co-founded.
0:31:07 > 0:31:10Now, as you know, a lot of writers in their memoirs,
0:31:10 > 0:31:13they will say, "I knew from when I first wrote that school play
0:31:13 > 0:31:15"at the age of four, I knew I was going to be a dramatist."
0:31:15 > 0:31:18You're rather different. You were an accidental dramatist.
0:31:18 > 0:31:19Completely accidental.
0:31:19 > 0:31:23I was surrounded by people who have a very powerful vocational sense.
0:31:23 > 0:31:26Howard Brenton was the principal Portable Theatre writer,
0:31:26 > 0:31:29Snoo Wilson was another one who absolutely knew
0:31:29 > 0:31:32he wanted to be a writer. I was directing Trevor Griffiths,
0:31:32 > 0:31:34who had a powerful vocational sense,
0:31:34 > 0:31:37and my friend Christopher Hampton had had a play performed
0:31:37 > 0:31:41- in the West End at the age of 21. - Who had been at Lancing with you.
0:31:41 > 0:31:43Yeah, he had been at Lancing with me. And so, you know,
0:31:43 > 0:31:46I seemed to be surrounded by people who knew they were writers.
0:31:46 > 0:31:48I didn't know I was a writer
0:31:48 > 0:31:51until Snoo failed to deliver a play on a Wednesday,
0:31:51 > 0:31:55and we had to have something to rehearse the following Monday,
0:31:55 > 0:31:58so, in four days, I wrote an hour-long satire,
0:31:58 > 0:32:02which was absolutely terrible but when the actors
0:32:02 > 0:32:05looked at the dialogue and they saw the page in front of them,
0:32:05 > 0:32:09I could see them go, "Oh, I think I can probably say this."
0:32:09 > 0:32:12And so, out of that, I acquired an agent,
0:32:12 > 0:32:15and the agent sent the one-hour play to Michael Codron,
0:32:15 > 0:32:19who was the West End leading producer who had discovered
0:32:19 > 0:32:23Harold Pinter and discovered Joe Orton and discovered Alan Ayckbourn.
0:32:23 > 0:32:25He was now telling me -
0:32:25 > 0:32:28I was 23, I had written one hour of material -
0:32:28 > 0:32:29he was telling me
0:32:29 > 0:32:32that I was the next one in this line.
0:32:32 > 0:32:37I was completely taken aback. I had no expectation or sense of this.
0:32:37 > 0:32:44And so, it was really by chance that it came about.
0:32:44 > 0:32:46Slag, which went on at 1970 in Hampstead,
0:32:46 > 0:32:49one of the few plays of yours I haven't seen,
0:32:49 > 0:32:52because it hasn't been revived, at least to my awareness.
0:32:52 > 0:32:55It's regarded as the official start of your career.
0:32:55 > 0:32:57Where it connects with the later work
0:32:57 > 0:33:00is that you took a prevailing ideology, in that case feminism,
0:33:00 > 0:33:05and you explored it, but in a farcical, a satirical way.
0:33:05 > 0:33:08Yeah. It's a satire. I was originally a satirist.
0:33:08 > 0:33:10My first agent was Clive Goodwin,
0:33:10 > 0:33:15who was running a revolutionary newspaper called the Black Dwarf,
0:33:15 > 0:33:18and he said, "You're a satirist
0:33:18 > 0:33:21"and you should write funny plays,
0:33:21 > 0:33:24"because that's what you are good at. Your jokes are good."
0:33:24 > 0:33:28And I started writing satire, so that's what my early plays were,
0:33:28 > 0:33:31and Slag was a satire on feminist separatism.
0:33:31 > 0:33:33Not on feminism.
0:33:33 > 0:33:35And do people ask to revive it?
0:33:35 > 0:33:37Yeah.
0:33:37 > 0:33:39And you say no?
0:33:41 > 0:33:45Look, I think it took me a long time to write a good play...
0:33:45 > 0:33:47Where do you date it from?
0:33:47 > 0:33:51The book is about the point at which I wrote Licking Hitler,
0:33:51 > 0:33:53which I think is a really good film,
0:33:53 > 0:33:56and Plenty, which I think is a really good play.
0:33:56 > 0:33:59And when people say to me, which they do,
0:33:59 > 0:34:03"No, but you haven't written a better play than Plenty since,"
0:34:03 > 0:34:06my reply is, "No, but nor has anyone else."
0:34:06 > 0:34:09- You don't see it as a decline after Plenty?- No, not in the slightest,
0:34:09 > 0:34:13but what happened was that my whole life fell to bits after Plenty.
0:34:13 > 0:34:15First of all, my first marriage ends.
0:34:15 > 0:34:19Secondly, I finally write a play which I think is a good play,
0:34:19 > 0:34:22which is Plenty, and it wasn't terribly well-received
0:34:22 > 0:34:25when it first came out, and it was only really
0:34:25 > 0:34:30when it was performed in America, in New York, at Joe Papp's theatre,
0:34:30 > 0:34:35that it became accepted in the way it is now.
0:34:35 > 0:34:38In fact, we should explain for people who don't remember
0:34:38 > 0:34:40or haven't read the book,
0:34:40 > 0:34:43Plenty, when it was first on - National Theatre, 1978 -
0:34:43 > 0:34:47was so unsuccessful that the chair of the board of the National Theatre
0:34:47 > 0:34:50told Peter Hall, the artistic director, to take it off,
0:34:50 > 0:34:54- and he refused.- Yeah. Peter Hall made a point,
0:34:54 > 0:34:58which I wish I saw more sign of in the subsidised theatre today.
0:34:58 > 0:35:00In other words, he said, "Yes,
0:35:00 > 0:35:04"we will take off work which we don't believe to be good,
0:35:04 > 0:35:06"but we will keep on work which we do believe to be good,
0:35:06 > 0:35:09"however few people are coming to see it, because
0:35:09 > 0:35:14"if we don't do that, we might as well BE the commercial theatre.
0:35:14 > 0:35:17"There simply is no difference between us
0:35:17 > 0:35:19"and the commercial theatre."
0:35:19 > 0:35:23And I don't see much evidence of theatres going out on a limb now
0:35:23 > 0:35:25on behalf of writers
0:35:25 > 0:35:28in the way that Peter Hall went out on a limb for me.
0:35:28 > 0:35:30He put me on on Friday and Saturday nights,
0:35:30 > 0:35:33so that they were the best nights of the week for audiences,
0:35:33 > 0:35:35he kept me in the repertory for eight months
0:35:35 > 0:35:37and by the end of eight months,
0:35:37 > 0:35:41the theatre was full and play was playing to standing ovations.
0:35:41 > 0:35:45But that was entirely because Peter Hall understood
0:35:45 > 0:35:47what subsidised theatre was for,
0:35:47 > 0:35:50which is to lead taste, not to follow it.
0:35:50 > 0:35:54But also, this has happened to you on an unusual number of occasions,
0:35:54 > 0:35:58that the revival of a play has been much better received than
0:35:58 > 0:36:00the origination, whereas, in fact,
0:36:00 > 0:36:02for a lot of writers, it is that other way round.
0:36:02 > 0:36:04It is notoriously the other way round.
0:36:04 > 0:36:07I think Charles Rosen,
0:36:07 > 0:36:09the pianist whom I quote,
0:36:09 > 0:36:11when I discovered this quote,
0:36:11 > 0:36:14it was solace to me, which is, he said,
0:36:14 > 0:36:17"From our artists we expect originality,
0:36:17 > 0:36:19"and then we complain when we get it."
0:36:19 > 0:36:21And I do believe that...
0:36:21 > 0:36:25Peggy Ramsay, my agent, and the greatest theatre agent
0:36:25 > 0:36:28of our time, always says, "The new is very ugly."
0:36:28 > 0:36:31And she said, Waiting For Godot, when it first came out,
0:36:31 > 0:36:34one's first response to it was, "My God, that play is ugly."
0:36:34 > 0:36:38The Birthday Party, "That play is ugly."
0:36:38 > 0:36:41And if you give people something that is genuinely new,
0:36:41 > 0:36:43their first response is to be shocked at the ugliness.
0:36:43 > 0:36:46In the memoir, you say about your plays,
0:36:46 > 0:36:49"Longing has always been my subject,"
0:36:49 > 0:36:52and that took me aback, because I wouldn't have thought of that word
0:36:52 > 0:36:55to unite your work. But why "longing"?
0:36:55 > 0:36:57Yearning, dreaming.
0:36:58 > 0:37:00Yeah. Romantic.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04The plays are romantic, essentially. And I think that I write best
0:37:04 > 0:37:10when I'm able to release that feeling of romantic...
0:37:10 > 0:37:13self-romance about the things that you do
0:37:13 > 0:37:15and the people you connect to.
0:37:15 > 0:37:19Although... Probably your most celebrated heroine, Susan Traherne
0:37:19 > 0:37:23in Plenty, played by Kate Nelligan originally, Meryl Streep on the film,
0:37:23 > 0:37:26that's more about belonging, isn't it?
0:37:26 > 0:37:28No, but that's romantic also, about the feelings that she,
0:37:28 > 0:37:32during the war, was with the finest group of people...
0:37:32 > 0:37:38That her great fortune has to be among noble, dedicated people
0:37:38 > 0:37:42who were tested to the limits and triumphantly came through,
0:37:42 > 0:37:45and that she will, you know... The first half of the play,
0:37:45 > 0:37:51which is essentially a celebration of the courage of her peers
0:37:51 > 0:37:57and the people who she worked with behind the lines in France,
0:37:57 > 0:38:00the second half is how her attachment to that memory
0:38:00 > 0:38:04prevents her from moving on after the war.
0:38:04 > 0:38:09- So, it's a longing for the past? I see. Yeah.- It's a longing for value.
0:38:09 > 0:38:12And value is what I write about -
0:38:12 > 0:38:17the difference between people who are able to find
0:38:17 > 0:38:22comfort in value, and people who can't find any value in their lives.
0:38:24 > 0:38:27I think of France more than I can tell you.
0:38:29 > 0:38:31I often think of it.
0:38:31 > 0:38:36- I'm sure.- People I met for only an hour or two. Great kindnesses.
0:38:37 > 0:38:39Bravery.
0:38:39 > 0:38:42The fact that you could meet someone for an hour or two,
0:38:42 > 0:38:44see the very best of them.
0:38:46 > 0:38:48And then move on.
0:38:48 > 0:38:50We talked about Slag, three characters,
0:38:50 > 0:38:54all women, the central female character in Plenty,
0:38:54 > 0:38:57the central female character in...
0:38:57 > 0:39:01yeah, in Licking Hitler, again played by Kate Nelligan,
0:39:01 > 0:39:04Amy's View, two main female characters.
0:39:04 > 0:39:06It is something you talked about earlier,
0:39:06 > 0:39:08about being brought up by women,
0:39:08 > 0:39:11it is something that you have done to an unusual degree for a male writer,
0:39:11 > 0:39:14- writing about women.- Yeah.
0:39:14 > 0:39:18I mean, I enjoy writing for women because...
0:39:18 > 0:39:19Um...
0:39:19 > 0:39:22First of all, I like the active imagination,
0:39:22 > 0:39:25so, in other words, to me, writing is only interesting
0:39:25 > 0:39:28when you're imagining something not yourself.
0:39:28 > 0:39:31Women, obviously, because I'm not.
0:39:31 > 0:39:34But also, because I have a particular view of women,
0:39:34 > 0:39:36which is to do with how I was brought up.
0:39:36 > 0:39:40Although, this is interesting, because, as you know,
0:39:40 > 0:39:43the common libel of critics is that often, in your plays,
0:39:43 > 0:39:46there has been a - Bernard Levin used to say this -
0:39:46 > 0:39:49a David-Hare-type character, often played by Bill Nighy,
0:39:49 > 0:39:55who was seen to represent your views, your personality, everything, really.
0:39:55 > 0:39:57Yeah. I think that may be...
0:39:57 > 0:40:02It may be true of The Worricker Trilogy that, obviously...
0:40:02 > 0:40:04But by that point,
0:40:04 > 0:40:08I think that Bill and I had merged in the public imagination...
0:40:08 > 0:40:09to a point.
0:40:09 > 0:40:12He has played, after all, ten times in my work,
0:40:12 > 0:40:20and I do find him a wonderfully adaptable and fluent actor,
0:40:20 > 0:40:24who can portray exactly what I'm talking about.
0:40:24 > 0:40:28The search for value and romantic longing are two things
0:40:28 > 0:40:29that Bill plays better than anybody.
0:40:29 > 0:40:32London's desperate. They want you back.
0:40:32 > 0:40:34They're insisting. They want you badly.
0:40:34 > 0:40:38You made a promise. You promised me.
0:40:38 > 0:40:40Johnny, you know how it works.
0:40:40 > 0:40:43One day, I am going to need a favour from MI5.
0:40:43 > 0:40:45- I bet you will. - I'm going to need it.
0:40:45 > 0:40:48You think I'll get my favour if I let you go?
0:40:48 > 0:40:51Johnny, you know what happens to whistle-blowers.
0:40:51 > 0:40:55They turn into lonely old men with bad breath...
0:40:56 > 0:40:58..and computers.
0:40:58 > 0:41:02- I'm going to go.- You don't have a chance at the airport.- I know that.
0:41:02 > 0:41:04- They're waiting for you. - I'll meet you at Chico's.
0:41:04 > 0:41:07Buy me a whisky. I'll be there in half an hour.
0:41:07 > 0:41:09And this time I'll drink.
0:41:10 > 0:41:12But I have to say one goodbye.
0:41:14 > 0:41:16He goes where you go.
0:41:18 > 0:41:19Er...
0:41:21 > 0:41:23Fine.
0:41:25 > 0:41:29I know it's incredibly annoying when people read autobiography,
0:41:29 > 0:41:32particularly when you've said you weren't an autobiographical writer,
0:41:32 > 0:41:34I watched Dreams Of Leaving,
0:41:34 > 0:41:38your 1980 play in which Bill Nighy plays this rather disaffected
0:41:38 > 0:41:42writer or journalist who falls in love with a character
0:41:42 > 0:41:46played by Kate Nelligan, and then in your memoirs, you reveal that
0:41:46 > 0:41:50you yourself had fallen in love with Kate Nelligan during this period,
0:41:50 > 0:41:54so, subconsciously, now, all that was coming out, wasn't it?
0:41:54 > 0:41:56Yes, I think that was more the subconscious.
0:41:56 > 0:41:57I think that's an exception.
0:41:57 > 0:42:00In other words, it was the end of my marriage
0:42:00 > 0:42:03and I'd written a play called Dreams Of Leaving - hello(!) -
0:42:03 > 0:42:08so, you know, clearly, that was an autobiographical one.
0:42:08 > 0:42:10You must forgive me.
0:42:13 > 0:42:15I came to tell you.
0:42:17 > 0:42:19I don't want to see you.
0:42:20 > 0:42:22I think we should stop.
0:42:23 > 0:42:27I don't know what role I'm meant to be serving.
0:42:28 > 0:42:30You don't use me.
0:42:35 > 0:42:37You just want me there.
0:42:41 > 0:42:46If only you could make some movement towards me.
0:42:49 > 0:42:50Touch me.
0:42:53 > 0:42:55I crave it...
0:42:57 > 0:42:59A word I might have chosen rather than "longing"
0:42:59 > 0:43:01to unite the work is "lying",
0:43:01 > 0:43:02because there's an astonishing speech...
0:43:02 > 0:43:06I still remember first seeing this and I watched it again the other day,
0:43:06 > 0:43:08Licking Hitler, at the end, in the voiceover,
0:43:08 > 0:43:11where the Kate Nelligan character talks about the lying.
0:43:11 > 0:43:13- Lying is a big theme for you.- Yeah.
0:43:13 > 0:43:16- National, public, private, all of it.- Yeah.
0:43:16 > 0:43:20Well, I mean, for goodness' sake.
0:43:20 > 0:43:25I mean, if you were going to characterise public policy in the
0:43:25 > 0:43:29last 50 years, there has been a fair amount of lying to us, hasn't there?
0:43:29 > 0:43:33Over the years, I have been watching the steady
0:43:33 > 0:43:39impoverishment of people's ideals, their loss of faith, the lying,
0:43:39 > 0:43:42the daily inveterate lying,
0:43:42 > 0:43:48the 30-year-old deep, corrosive national habit of lying.
0:43:48 > 0:43:51And I have remembered you.
0:43:53 > 0:43:56I have remembered the one lie you told...
0:43:56 > 0:43:58to make me go away.
0:44:01 > 0:44:06And I now, at last, have come to understand why you told it.
0:44:09 > 0:44:13I loved you then, and I love you now.
0:44:14 > 0:44:16That speech about lying, though, that was...
0:44:16 > 0:44:19One of the reasons that, I think, there was
0:44:19 > 0:44:23hostility towards Licking Hitler, was the idea that you were
0:44:23 > 0:44:27moralistic and judgmental, that you were judging the audience.
0:44:27 > 0:44:31From very early on, certain critics thought you were lecturing them.
0:44:31 > 0:44:32Yeah.
0:44:32 > 0:44:34I can do very little about that.
0:44:34 > 0:44:38In other words, the work is the child of the man.
0:44:38 > 0:44:41I don't think the plays are moralistic,
0:44:41 > 0:44:46but there is no doubt that they did get up the audience's nose,
0:44:46 > 0:44:51and that must be a quality in me over which I can do very little.
0:44:51 > 0:44:54I'm not, as I say in the book,
0:44:54 > 0:44:58a very judgmental person about people's behaviour.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01Indeed, I think I judge people less than most people.
0:45:01 > 0:45:05I'm rather sympathetic to people who fall from grace,
0:45:05 > 0:45:08because I can see how easily it would happen to me.
0:45:08 > 0:45:12Racing Demon, your play about the Church of England, has fascinated me.
0:45:12 > 0:45:14Although you are a non-believer,
0:45:14 > 0:45:19it's a deeply sympathetic play about priests and the Church of England.
0:45:19 > 0:45:21Well, it's hugely to Richard Eyre's credit.
0:45:21 > 0:45:25Richard Eyre was running the National Theatre, and when I went
0:45:25 > 0:45:30to him and said, "I want to write a play about the Church of England."
0:45:30 > 0:45:33He at once saw what I was about, and I said,
0:45:33 > 0:45:36"It's not going to be about vicars and it's not going to be a satire
0:45:36 > 0:45:40"and it's not going to set off to just say how ridiculous they are,
0:45:40 > 0:45:43"nor is it going to be a lament for the decline of religion.
0:45:43 > 0:45:45"It's going to be about the fact
0:45:45 > 0:45:48"that these people have become social workers,
0:45:48 > 0:45:52"and that they are trying to hold communities together
0:45:52 > 0:45:56"that are being mashed by terrible historical forces,"
0:45:56 > 0:45:58and Richard, the minute I said it, was on to it
0:45:58 > 0:46:00and said, "That's a brilliant idea.
0:46:00 > 0:46:02"Do vicars seriously and take them seriously."
0:46:02 > 0:46:04And that's what I did.
0:46:04 > 0:46:10There are an awful lot of people round here in a very bad way
0:46:10 > 0:46:14and they need something besides silence...
0:46:15 > 0:46:16..God.
0:46:17 > 0:46:21That was part of what became known as The Hare Trilogy.
0:46:21 > 0:46:25Racing Demon - Church of England, Murmuring Judges - the judiciary,
0:46:25 > 0:46:28and The Absence Of War - Westminster and politics.
0:46:28 > 0:46:30And you wrote a book called Asking Around,
0:46:30 > 0:46:33- which was about the research for that.- That's right.
0:46:33 > 0:46:37Richard Eyre, again, was responsible for giving me the chance...
0:46:37 > 0:46:39Before the play came out,
0:46:39 > 0:46:42he said to me, "This thing of researching a subject
0:46:42 > 0:46:44"and then going completely free
0:46:44 > 0:46:47"and doing it as fiction is very, very rich,
0:46:47 > 0:46:50"because, hitherto, they've either been documentary plays
0:46:50 > 0:46:53"or they've been plays that are pure fiction.
0:46:53 > 0:46:55"But this thing of researching it first
0:46:55 > 0:47:00"and then go flying free is new, and you should do three like this."
0:47:00 > 0:47:03And I said, "The only conditions I'll do three
0:47:03 > 0:47:07"is if they are all eventually presented in one day,
0:47:07 > 0:47:10"three together." And he let me do that.
0:47:10 > 0:47:13And there was a lot of lobbying about what the subjects
0:47:13 > 0:47:15of these three plays would be,
0:47:15 > 0:47:17but I made my own mind up about that
0:47:17 > 0:47:19and refused suggestions.
0:47:19 > 0:47:23- Presumably people saying NHS, BBC and so on, all of those?- Sure.
0:47:23 > 0:47:26But I think that, even then, I was beginning to sense
0:47:26 > 0:47:30that there could be no more plays that said - 1940s wonderful,
0:47:30 > 0:47:33everything now terrible.
0:47:33 > 0:47:37And plays that work to that template are boring.
0:47:37 > 0:47:40It's been done so many times.
0:47:40 > 0:47:44And that was a plan I was trying to resist in that
0:47:44 > 0:47:47trilogy of plays, already, by 1993.
0:47:47 > 0:47:49Listen, next time you're tempted to be serious,
0:47:49 > 0:47:52when you look at a judge, under the robes, under the language,
0:47:52 > 0:47:55under the gravity, please remember
0:47:55 > 0:47:57he's made a style choice for which any adult male
0:47:57 > 0:47:59except Danny La Rue would be instantly arrested.
0:47:59 > 0:48:03And is that why a man with an Irish accent gets such a bad deal?
0:48:03 > 0:48:07After The Hare Trilogy, there is, in various ways,
0:48:07 > 0:48:10different ways of putting facts on stage.
0:48:10 > 0:48:11Stuff Happens,
0:48:11 > 0:48:15for the first time, they have the names Blair and Bush,
0:48:15 > 0:48:17they're saying some things that we know they said,
0:48:17 > 0:48:19some things you think they said.
0:48:19 > 0:48:23The Permanent Way, a verbatim play about railway privatisation,
0:48:23 > 0:48:25based on interviews, and Via Dolorosa,
0:48:25 > 0:48:28which is a monologue you delivered yourself,
0:48:28 > 0:48:32so the plays are all, in that sense, getting more directly factual.
0:48:32 > 0:48:33I don't think so.
0:48:33 > 0:48:38In other words, more that I think I wanted to experiment with form.
0:48:38 > 0:48:42The one-person monologue is now a sort of...
0:48:42 > 0:48:46It's the leylandii of the British theatre, it's absolutely everywhere,
0:48:46 > 0:48:48but when I did Via Dolorosa,
0:48:48 > 0:48:51it was not a form many people were working in, particularly
0:48:51 > 0:48:57the serious monologue that is about your own personal reaction.
0:48:57 > 0:49:00Stuff Happens was a very original form.
0:49:00 > 0:49:02Permanent Way, very original, and Power Of Yes,
0:49:02 > 0:49:05you could say was the most experimental of the lot.
0:49:05 > 0:49:11I've just felt more and more... discontent maybe with conventional
0:49:11 > 0:49:15theatrical form and wanted to play with it more as the years went by.
0:49:15 > 0:49:18There are many playwrights who would run
0:49:18 > 0:49:21screaming at the idea of delivering on stage night after night
0:49:21 > 0:49:25a monologue they'd written but, again, you backed yourself to do it.
0:49:25 > 0:49:29I think that it's just the job to stay adventurous,
0:49:29 > 0:49:32and this was more or less, "I can't act, I'm not an actor,"
0:49:32 > 0:49:36but I thought that Stephen Daldry could teach me to perform,
0:49:36 > 0:49:40and so it just seemed an adventurous and exciting thing to do.
0:49:40 > 0:49:42And Via Dolorosa, actually,
0:49:42 > 0:49:44is one of the most successful things I ever did.
0:49:44 > 0:49:46I mean, I did it 200 times.
0:49:46 > 0:49:48People have done it everywhere.
0:49:48 > 0:49:51And it always appeals to people.
0:49:51 > 0:49:56And it's always the daring of it that I think people like.
0:49:56 > 0:49:59I had no sense of how I did it
0:49:59 > 0:50:01because I am completely without any kind of external
0:50:01 > 0:50:03monitor of any kind.
0:50:03 > 0:50:05The only thing that people said to me
0:50:05 > 0:50:08was that there was something rather moving
0:50:08 > 0:50:10when I was totally terrified.
0:50:10 > 0:50:14In other words, when I came out in the first performances
0:50:14 > 0:50:16in the West End, originally,
0:50:16 > 0:50:21I looked so terrified that the audience rushed towards me,
0:50:21 > 0:50:25- as if to protect me.- You were actually shaking.- I was shaking.
0:50:25 > 0:50:27I was shaking with terror.
0:50:27 > 0:50:31And there was a way in which, as I became more proficient,
0:50:31 > 0:50:33I became a great deal less moving.
0:50:33 > 0:50:36I always loved Simon Callow's description of my performance,
0:50:36 > 0:50:38which I always thought was best,
0:50:38 > 0:50:42where he said, "He went out, unprotected by technique."
0:50:44 > 0:50:48On the way in, I'd been advised not to let them stamp my passport,
0:50:48 > 0:50:51so that I can visit Arab countries.
0:50:51 > 0:50:56But on the way out, before I can say anything, wham!
0:50:56 > 0:50:57LAUGHTER
0:50:57 > 0:50:59Not a second to speak,
0:50:59 > 0:51:05and the word "Israel" is on my passport for ever.
0:51:09 > 0:51:12You've mentioned already a couple of things in the book that
0:51:12 > 0:51:15people who don't write or they simply will regard them
0:51:15 > 0:51:19as bizarre, here's another one that you stated very, very boldly.
0:51:19 > 0:51:22"If anything has been my salvation as a human being, it is
0:51:22 > 0:51:25"this choice of an activity which is, at the deepest level,
0:51:25 > 0:51:27"out of my hands,"
0:51:27 > 0:51:30and then you go on to say elsewhere, the basic question -
0:51:30 > 0:51:33why is the play the way it is? - "I have no answer at all,"
0:51:33 > 0:51:36and then, elsewhere, "The play was writing itself."
0:51:36 > 0:51:38Well, that's the mystery of style, isn't it?
0:51:38 > 0:51:41So that, you know, an actor will ask me,
0:51:41 > 0:51:43"Why do I have to say this line like this?
0:51:43 > 0:51:45"Why do the words...
0:51:45 > 0:51:48"Why do they have to be the exact words?"
0:51:48 > 0:51:50I go crazy if actors paraphrase.
0:51:50 > 0:51:54Why? They say, "Surely it's just the same if I paraphrase the line?"
0:51:54 > 0:51:57Now, the reply is, "No, it's not the same."
0:51:57 > 0:51:58"Why is it not the same?"
0:51:58 > 0:52:01The answer is, the music, the rhythm, the style is,
0:52:01 > 0:52:03it looks wrong,
0:52:03 > 0:52:05Just as Francis Bacon would say,
0:52:05 > 0:52:07"It looks wrong if there's vermillion in the corner
0:52:07 > 0:52:09"rather than brown."
0:52:09 > 0:52:14He can't explain why it looks right, but that is the mystery of art.
0:52:14 > 0:52:18And art comes from the subconscious, not from the conscious,
0:52:18 > 0:52:20so that you can't will yourself, you can only say,
0:52:20 > 0:52:24"I don't know why, but this line sort of sounds right now,
0:52:24 > 0:52:26"whereas it didn't sound right before."
0:52:26 > 0:52:28Afterwards, you can rationalise and say,
0:52:28 > 0:52:30"Oh, yes, I can see what I'm doing,"
0:52:30 > 0:52:33and you slowly begin to understand what it was you were doing,
0:52:33 > 0:52:36but the doing of it is not something over which you
0:52:36 > 0:52:38exercise conscious control.
0:52:38 > 0:52:41- That's art.- If writing comes from the subconscious,
0:52:41 > 0:52:42the choice of subject matter,
0:52:42 > 0:52:45the choice to write about a black propaganda unit
0:52:45 > 0:52:48in Britain during the Second World War in Licking Hitler,
0:52:48 > 0:52:52the choice to write about the Church of England in Racing Demon,
0:52:52 > 0:52:54those are conscious choices, clearly.
0:52:54 > 0:52:56Well, there's something...
0:52:56 > 0:52:59I can't explain why certain subjects are,
0:52:59 > 0:53:01just as a photographer would say, photogenic,
0:53:01 > 0:53:03and so there are certain subjects
0:53:03 > 0:53:06that seem to me immediately drama-genic.
0:53:06 > 0:53:08I don't always know why.
0:53:08 > 0:53:11I just know this really, really interests me and moves me.
0:53:11 > 0:53:13And the Church of England,
0:53:13 > 0:53:19immediately that I went to the Synod in York and saw all these
0:53:19 > 0:53:22priests together, pretending that they were part of a parliament,
0:53:22 > 0:53:24I was intensely moved by it,
0:53:24 > 0:53:27and you start writing from that feeling,
0:53:27 > 0:53:30and if you don't have that feeling of being moved
0:53:30 > 0:53:35by the subject matter, then you are unlikely to succeed, I think.
0:53:35 > 0:53:38But also, the question of why you write about a certain subject
0:53:38 > 0:53:40at a certain time, many playwrights might have written
0:53:40 > 0:53:43South Downs at the start of their career,
0:53:43 > 0:53:46the play about their school days, whereas you did it relatively late,
0:53:46 > 0:53:50but that would be a product of personality and psychology.
0:53:50 > 0:53:52I think exactly that.
0:53:52 > 0:53:55I think I'm beginning to understand things about myself through
0:53:55 > 0:53:59this process, that probably I haven't understood for many years.
0:53:59 > 0:54:01But I think that I had to fight so hard...
0:54:01 > 0:54:05In other words, because I'd always struggled against a background,
0:54:05 > 0:54:08as you say, plays not being understood when I first wrote them.
0:54:08 > 0:54:12You know, late in my life I wrote The Judas Kiss,
0:54:12 > 0:54:16the play about Oscar Wilde, which was really not understood at all,
0:54:16 > 0:54:20perhaps because of the production, perhaps because of the timing,
0:54:20 > 0:54:21but now, you know,
0:54:21 > 0:54:23when it was recently revived with Rupert Everett,
0:54:23 > 0:54:28is now accepted and understood, that has been
0:54:28 > 0:54:33so much my experience in the theatre that it has made me defensive.
0:54:33 > 0:54:35I've had to be defensive
0:54:35 > 0:54:38because I have had to fight on behalf of my place.
0:54:38 > 0:54:42Maybe that hasn't given me time to relax into self-examination,
0:54:42 > 0:54:44which maybe I'm doing now.
0:54:44 > 0:54:48There's a lot of self-analysis in the plays and in the memoir and,
0:54:48 > 0:54:49indeed, in this interview.
0:54:49 > 0:54:53- Have you ever submitted to professional analysis?- No.
0:54:53 > 0:54:56That's policy, clearly, by your age.
0:54:56 > 0:54:58Well, it's superstition, isn't it?
0:54:58 > 0:55:03Investigating the origins of creativity is of absolutely
0:55:03 > 0:55:04no interest to me.
0:55:04 > 0:55:07I'm just a man rubbing sticks round a fire,
0:55:07 > 0:55:10hoping that the fire is going to catch light,
0:55:10 > 0:55:13and I really don't want to know why it catches light.
0:55:13 > 0:55:17I think that writing the book has made me understand...
0:55:17 > 0:55:23I had always assumed that anger was the motivating force in my life,
0:55:23 > 0:55:25and I think that bewilderment...
0:55:25 > 0:55:30I now feel that bewilderment is IT,
0:55:30 > 0:55:36meaning I cannot understand why other people do not feel as I do.
0:55:36 > 0:55:39Let me explain to you why I feel like this,
0:55:39 > 0:55:42and let me see if you feel like this as well.
0:55:42 > 0:55:45There are many cases in England of very successful dramatists,
0:55:45 > 0:55:48it's unfair to name them, who had decades at the end
0:55:48 > 0:55:51of their careers without getting work on.
0:55:51 > 0:55:56Have you ever feared that fate, and how have you avoided it?
0:55:56 > 0:55:58I think I did panic, yeah.
0:55:58 > 0:56:03I think I panicked at the end of my marriage, in 1979,
0:56:03 > 0:56:09and when the world turned in a direction I was not expecting.
0:56:09 > 0:56:12In other words, nobody had foresaw that workers would
0:56:12 > 0:56:16lose their rights, the markets would kick up and find new vitality
0:56:16 > 0:56:20and that by tearing up the rights of workers,
0:56:20 > 0:56:24capitalism could renew itself from within,
0:56:24 > 0:56:26and when it happened, I was lost, you know.
0:56:26 > 0:56:28It was not what I was expecting.
0:56:28 > 0:56:33And so, I didn't know how to write for some years.
0:56:33 > 0:56:37And then, when I sat down with Howard Brenton to write Pravda,
0:56:37 > 0:56:41a series of conversations with Howard freed me up
0:56:41 > 0:56:46and liberated me, and I will always be grateful to him for that.
0:56:46 > 0:56:48You say in the memoir,
0:56:48 > 0:56:51"Although I've spent much of my time depressed,
0:56:51 > 0:56:52"i.e. dissatisfied with myself,
0:56:52 > 0:56:58"I've also never been bored, i.e. dissatisfied with the world."
0:56:58 > 0:57:00The book ends on...
0:57:00 > 0:57:03I mean, you whizz through the latter part of your life quite quickly,
0:57:03 > 0:57:07and it ends on an apparently happy note, married to Nicole Farhi,
0:57:07 > 0:57:09good relations with your three children,
0:57:09 > 0:57:13but do you remain dissatisfied with yourself
0:57:13 > 0:57:15but excited with the world?
0:57:15 > 0:57:21I'm never bored, meaning that I always think that if there is
0:57:21 > 0:57:25a problem, it tends to be with myself and with my own temperament,
0:57:25 > 0:57:29and the world itself still seems to me incredibly exciting and
0:57:29 > 0:57:34interesting, and places which I hitherto thought incredibly dull...
0:57:34 > 0:57:38Bexhill is still marginal, but I now go to Eastbourne,
0:57:38 > 0:57:43which was the town I despised most in the world, and now I look at it
0:57:43 > 0:57:46and I think it is so ravishingly beautiful,
0:57:46 > 0:57:50when you see that sunlight coming down on the cliffs at Eastbourne.
0:57:50 > 0:57:53So the place that I thought I had spent my life
0:57:53 > 0:57:57getting away from, in fact, is the place that I just now find
0:57:57 > 0:58:00incredibly moving,
0:58:00 > 0:58:04and so I can't now imagine a place I would not be interested in.
0:58:04 > 0:58:08- David Hare, thank you.- Thank you.