:00:12. > :00:15.That is a summary of the news. Now it is time for HARDtalk. I speak to
:00:15. > :00:18.one of Britain's finest writing talents, whose creativity defies a
:00:18. > :00:21.simple label. Yes, Michael Frayn is a renowned playwright whose work
:00:21. > :00:23.has ranged from high farce to cerebral intensity. But he's also
:00:24. > :00:26.an acclaimed novelist and an accomplished translator from the
:00:26. > :00:29.Russian of Chekhov and Tolstoy. Throughout his writing career he's
:00:29. > :00:39.mixed high seriousness with a wicked sense of the absurd. Is
:00:39. > :01:11.
:01:11. > :01:15.laughter an essential tool for the Michael Frayn, welcome to HARDtalk.
:01:15. > :01:19.Nice to be here. I would like to start at the beginning of your
:01:19. > :01:23.professional writing career. You joined the Manchester Guardian
:01:23. > :01:29.newspaper and I wonder whether you still feel, these years later,
:01:29. > :01:37.there is something of the report it in you? Yes, I think newspapers
:01:37. > :01:42.were, in a way, where I felt most at home. Newspapers were where I
:01:42. > :01:47.began and probably newspapers were where I should have stayed.
:01:47. > :01:50.very surprised you say that given what has happened since. Was it the
:01:50. > :01:58.nature of being a witness to events that appealed to you? You could
:01:58. > :02:02.watch the way people behaved. don't know, I think, I have to say,
:02:02. > :02:09.I think good, serious reporting is one of the hardest forms of writing
:02:10. > :02:16.I have done. If you write fiction, if you make things up, the world is
:02:16. > :02:20.already simplified inside your head. If you have to describe the world
:02:21. > :02:26.out there in front of your eyes it is unbelievably complicated.
:02:26. > :02:30.Everything is tangled together. In order to sort anything out to make
:02:30. > :02:33.sense - that is very difficult. am fascinated by that answer
:02:33. > :02:37.because it leads me to have thought I have had for a while when
:02:37. > :02:42.thinking about your career. It is a thought about control. By moving
:02:42. > :02:45.away from the factual reporting, reporting the world as it seems to
:02:45. > :02:50.be, to creating worlds in your head you were giving yourself a new
:02:50. > :02:55.level of control over the story. I wonder how important that was to
:02:55. > :02:58.you? I think that is true. I don't think of it in terms of control,
:02:58. > :03:02.but I think it is true that if you make things up you are the master
:03:02. > :03:10.of your own universe.Not if you are trying to describe the universe out
:03:10. > :03:18.there. In my meagre rear I went back to doing some serious
:03:18. > :03:25.reporting. -- need-Korea. I went all over the place - I did a series
:03:25. > :03:31.on Cuba. Germany as well, my interest in Germany began then, all
:03:31. > :03:35.over the place. I sometimes thought that writers of fiction should be
:03:36. > :03:45.required by law to go and do some reporting, just to remind them of
:03:46. > :03:52.
:03:52. > :03:56.former foreign correspondent I quite like that idea. I was struck
:03:56. > :04:02.by Lloyd, the figure of the director, the French it director it
:04:02. > :04:07.was trying to make this play that is the centre of your drama --
:04:07. > :04:12.frantic director. He thinks of himself as God, there are constant
:04:12. > :04:15.references to him being God. In a way, that is the way you have been,
:04:15. > :04:19.creating characters and moving stories along the way you wanted.
:04:19. > :04:23.Is that a way of looking at it that appeals to you? You know, it is a
:04:23. > :04:29.funny thing - in theory you are in charge of the world you invent, but
:04:29. > :04:33.in fact, when you actually start writing the character, everyone
:04:33. > :04:37.says this and everyone thinks this and it is just a silly, sentimental
:04:37. > :04:41.way of looking at it - the characters seem to come to life.
:04:41. > :04:47.They do seem to take over their own destiny to some extent. They begin
:04:47. > :04:51.to say things themselves and do things themselves. However hard you
:04:51. > :04:55.work to invent a plausible plot for them, to invent a life and
:04:55. > :05:02.background, at some point that they knock it out of your hands and take
:05:02. > :05:05.over. Is that really true? Yes. you think of an example right now
:05:05. > :05:09.we have bee we have beeve key characters involved in you
:05:09. > :05:14.found yourself going over in two directions you hadn't planned that
:05:14. > :05:19.did not fit your story board or however you plan things out? Every
:05:19. > :05:23.time, yes. I have often thought that fiction, what is most likely
:05:23. > :05:28.is industrial manage a lot of workers and your own
:05:28. > :05:31.vision, to get the workers doing the correct things, you have
:05:31. > :05:35.targets, you want them to produce the goods for you, you have to find
:05:36. > :05:42.some way of either bullying them or negotiating with them to come to
:05:42. > :05:52.terms with them so they do a bit of your programme and Udal a bit of
:05:52. > :05:53.
:05:53. > :05:57.their programme. -- so you do a bit of their programme. A play that is
:05:57. > :06:05.popular in London at the moment, it is 30 years since you wrote it.
:06:05. > :06:10.seem dated to you? I have done a lot of rewriting since. It was
:06:10. > :06:15.revised at the National Theatre in 2000. That was by Jeremy cents. I
:06:15. > :06:19.said to him - I have seen it so many times I can see where some of
:06:19. > :06:25.the weak spots are and I would like to do some work on it. He said "I
:06:25. > :06:32.would like you did a lot of work on at". He had some good ideas for
:06:32. > :06:41.rewriting. I did a great deal of work then. I haven't done any re-
:06:41. > :06:46.writing on this particular go, it is like one of those houses in the
:06:46. > :06:52.country that has been done up over and over again. The plaster has
:06:52. > :06:57.been reworked, repainted. It is very difficult to know whether you
:06:57. > :07:05.have got the original house or something completely new. He's
:07:05. > :07:08.writing funny harder than writing serious? I think any sort of
:07:08. > :07:17.writing, even writing a thank you for a Christmas present is
:07:17. > :07:27.difficult. Cut the lead when you get started things to begin to take
:07:27. > :07:30.
:07:30. > :07:40.over -- hopefully. Everyone says the story about the old actor dying,
:07:40. > :07:43.he says "yes, it is hard dying, but not as hard as fast". It is
:07:43. > :07:49.difficult to write, it is complicated, but also because you
:07:49. > :07:53.have to keep inventing more and more things. Also, the thing about
:07:53. > :07:59.absurdism it is, while it looks like total chaos, it is the most
:07:59. > :08:04.highly organised form of physical drama. It has to be highly
:08:04. > :08:09.organised, yes. You have a reputation for being a highly
:08:09. > :08:13.intellectual writer and artist. Does it stick in York for all, a
:08:13. > :08:19.little bit, that the play that most people are most familiar with is
:08:20. > :08:26.the one that has the most slapstick in it, the most obvious laughs?
:08:26. > :08:34.I like it! I like laughing myself. It doesn't happen as often as you
:08:34. > :08:40.might expect, laughing in the theatre. There is a wonderful play
:08:40. > :08:50.called one man, two governors, that is wonderful, laughing and laughing
:08:50. > :08:50.
:08:50. > :08:55.in the theatre. When the play finishers and I see people laughing,
:08:55. > :08:59.it is great. It strikes me that there is something painful about
:09:00. > :09:05.the laughter. Certainly in noises Off, everything is going wrong. It
:09:05. > :09:10.is human beings trying to bring order to the chaos and failing and
:09:10. > :09:16.failing. Maybe that is a serious thing that runs through your work,
:09:16. > :09:21.in the comedies as well as in the serious stuff. I think all, these
:09:21. > :09:27.are serious, if there is no serious issue, there is nothing to laugh at.
:09:27. > :09:34.Well, Laurel and Hardy doesn't really have a seriousness.
:09:34. > :09:40.serious message - you have to see them losing their dignity in some
:09:40. > :09:43.way, attempting to be a dignified citizen and being undercut.
:09:43. > :09:49.there is a gap between what the human being would like to achieve
:09:49. > :09:54.and what they can achieve? Yes. Why do people laugh at noises off? When
:09:54. > :09:59.it was first done, people said OK, it works for this country, because
:09:59. > :10:02.people know about English sex farces. It is kind of a pastiche.
:10:02. > :10:06.It would never worked anywhere else because they don't all about that.
:10:06. > :10:11.But it was good all over the world. Why? I think it is because we all
:10:11. > :10:15.have some kind of feel inside ourselves that we will break down -
:10:15. > :10:18.we won't be able to go on with the show. And people do break down,
:10:18. > :10:24.they can't go out and face the world. I think if you see it
:10:24. > :10:30.happening to somebody else, an idiot, they are having difficulty
:10:30. > :10:34.keeping the show going, it releases the tension inside yourself. I find
:10:34. > :10:38.it fascinating, as you say, it has been successful around the world.
:10:38. > :10:43.It has been playing in all sorts of cities. Broadway, Paris, Europe,
:10:43. > :10:47.beyond Europe. I just wonder whether it, right now, it appeals
:10:47. > :10:51.to people around the world because there is total mayhem and it is
:10:52. > :10:56.very funny but it's sort of doesn't matter that much. It all comes sort
:10:56. > :11:01.of right in the end, which is the nature of farce, otherwise it would
:11:01. > :11:05.be a tragedy. Is that what we need right now? A good laugh, and the
:11:05. > :11:08.belief that it will come right in the end? It comes at sort of
:11:08. > :11:12.writing the end, in the sense that it goes completely wrong but they
:11:12. > :11:19.put some kind of face on it. They managed to just get out of it with
:11:19. > :11:22.a smile on their faces. That is probably what we do in life, isn't
:11:22. > :11:29.it was like everything goes completely wrong, but with any luck
:11:29. > :11:34.you get out of it with enough grace to a kind of... (LAUGHTER). That
:11:34. > :11:37.sounds like my philosophy. Moving to a different sort of way, and I
:11:37. > :11:44.am aware that not everybody will have seen some of these plays, but
:11:44. > :11:48.one particular place strikes a chord and that is the play called
:11:48. > :11:52.Copenhagen. That recreate the meeting that happened between a
:11:52. > :11:59.leading nuclear German scientist Heisenberg who worked for the Nazi
:11:59. > :12:02.government and a Danish nuclear scientist. You work with fact, but
:12:02. > :12:06.then you imagine what would have happened in a meeting between the
:12:06. > :12:11.two. How important was it for you, coming from being a journalist, to
:12:11. > :12:20.get this right? To get all the details? I worked very hard to find
:12:20. > :12:25.that everything that was known about these two men. The difficulty
:12:25. > :12:31.was that they were old friends, very close friends and
:12:31. > :12:36.collaborators. And both brilliant nuclear scientists. Very great
:12:36. > :12:40.nuclear physicists, atomic physicists. It was really
:12:40. > :12:49.Heisenberg who was chiefly responsible for a quantum mechanics.
:12:49. > :12:54.The problem was, in 1941 they were on opposite sides. This was very
:12:54. > :13:01.embarrassing for Neil's sport to receive a visit from Heisenberg.
:13:01. > :13:06.The meeting went wrong, they could never quite agree on what
:13:06. > :13:11.Heisenberg had said. What every pause, the Danish side has got
:13:11. > :13:15.angry and the conversation was broken off. I tried to respect the
:13:15. > :13:22.records in so far as they existed. What I then tried to do was imagine
:13:22. > :13:29.what was inside the heads of the two men. Sure, but what I'm driving
:13:29. > :13:33.at is whether it really matters. I think one academic in the States
:13:33. > :13:38.who write about these things and studies then said that what you are
:13:38. > :13:44.presented was a false picture of Heisenberg. Essentially you had
:13:44. > :13:54.become an apologist for Heisenberg, avoiding his nut seat party
:13:54. > :13:58.sympathies -- Nazi. Let me make it clear, Heisenberg was not a member
:13:58. > :14:06.of the Nazi party, he had been persecuted by them. The question is
:14:06. > :14:10.whether he was prepared to go too far to serve them. I don't think
:14:10. > :14:13.that commentator thinks that he was a Nazi. No, I didn't mean to imply
:14:13. > :14:23.that. My question is - does that really mattered to the quality of
:14:23. > :14:49.
:14:49. > :14:56.It via was sending an apology for Heisenberg or attacking him, it
:14:56. > :15:00.misses the point of the play. it was first put on in New York his
:15:01. > :15:08.own son came to see it on the first night. What did he say to you
:15:08. > :15:15.afterwards? It was a hair-raising meeting. No it's run high on first
:15:15. > :15:20.night and I suddenly saw this tall, commanding young man. He said, a
:15:20. > :15:25.cure Heisenberg was not like my father. I never saw my father at
:15:25. > :15:28.express feelings for anything except music. But then he said
:15:28. > :15:34.something which showed he understood the point of historical
:15:34. > :15:39.drama. He said, but I see in a play that you have to have characters
:15:39. > :15:47.who are more forthcoming than that. That is why I write fiction about
:15:47. > :15:54.real characters and events. Every dramatist from Shakespeare onwards.
:15:54. > :15:59.The point is to try to do imagine that things, CBE causal connections
:15:59. > :16:03.in things that are not apparent in the world and tried to imagine that
:16:03. > :16:09.things that cannot be on the historical record, like what goes
:16:09. > :16:15.on inside people's heads. There were and real person that I wonder
:16:15. > :16:21.if you have ever tried to characterise or write about ease
:16:21. > :16:25.yourself. You said something about shekel of up. You said that you
:16:25. > :16:33.admire the fact that in his wonderful works he never tried to
:16:33. > :16:40.put himself in them. -- Chekhov. He was a very modest man. He was
:16:40. > :16:47.extraordinarily absent from his work. Art you absent from your us?
:16:47. > :16:52.Fairly apps and, yes. They have to find in their characters something
:16:52. > :17:02.that they recognise in themselves. Just as the actors then have to
:17:02. > :17:05.
:17:05. > :17:14.find something in themselves to bring the characters to life. I
:17:14. > :17:19.think it is quite difficult to write about oneself. In fact,
:17:20. > :17:24.writing about my father. The apps water was going to come to next.
:17:24. > :17:29.Writing primarily about your father, and your mother, being brought up
:17:29. > :17:34.in the Second World War - has that lead you to want to explore
:17:34. > :17:41.yourself a little bit more? Added not even really want to do it in
:17:41. > :17:45.the book. I wanted to write about my father. But since part of my
:17:45. > :17:51.father's experience was having a son and trying to get on with him
:17:51. > :17:57.despite the fact that we were very different people, I had to put
:17:57. > :18:04.myself in the book. I do not think my want to do anything more about
:18:04. > :18:08.this. The story of your father is extraordinary because he was an
:18:08. > :18:12.asbestos salesman at a time when no-one knew it was highly dangerous.
:18:12. > :18:17.And of course used to bring vista of into the house and used to play
:18:17. > :18:23.with it, not with that. I know that your sister, as a result of having
:18:24. > :18:33.this in the house, was poisoned by it. I think so. She died of
:18:34. > :18:36.
:18:36. > :18:43.mesothelioma. Andy many years later. It catches up, 20 or 30 years after
:18:43. > :18:51.exposure to asbestos. My sister did not know whether it was my father's
:18:51. > :18:56.is best as samples or not. but she could not think of many appear his
:18:57. > :19:02.pistols in a light. My father used to give the samples to me and I
:19:02. > :19:06.would saw them up a hacksaw and bank hols in them. This was in
:19:06. > :19:12.London during the war and he progressed to Cambridge University
:19:12. > :19:16.after that. You have lead through fascinating times and at Cambridge
:19:16. > :19:23.it was the era of the will be and Maclean, the paranoia that went
:19:23. > :19:28.with the Cold War and both sides of the ideological divide. You were a
:19:28. > :19:35.flu and Russian speak and did lots of translation work. We were
:19:35. > :19:42.approached by any intelligence services? Id two years' military
:19:42. > :19:52.service and a was sent to Cambridge to learn Russian for the army
:19:52. > :19:54.
:19:54. > :19:59.ration core. When I went back as an undergraduate some friends deny he
:19:59. > :20:06.spoke Russian fixed the first exchange programme with a ration
:20:06. > :20:13.University in Moscow. I think it was the first one. Because we were
:20:13. > :20:20.still in the Army Reserve we had to ask permission and explained. We
:20:20. > :20:28.did come into contact with military intelligence. Did they tried to
:20:28. > :20:34.recruit you? The officer I approached said, if you need to any
:20:34. > :20:40.one interesting at university you may take some part in Russian live
:20:40. > :20:45.later, please let us know. I absolutely declined. The point of
:20:45. > :20:55.the trip was that we were independent. We were just going as
:20:55. > :20:56.
:20:57. > :21:00.students, not spies. If I had said years, they might have... group.
:21:00. > :21:06.wonder what you had strong ideological positions of Europe and
:21:06. > :21:14.then? Tinnies go you wrote the play cabby mac democracy, which looked
:21:14. > :21:24.at the complicated politics of West Germany, in the context of the Cold
:21:24. > :21:27.
:21:27. > :21:33.War. -- Democracy. I was a communist. A friend and I had an
:21:33. > :21:40.independent communist cell. We had a Thank you independent communist
:21:40. > :21:46.cell in the school. But it wore off. That is why Ireland and Russian
:21:46. > :21:51.because I could see that Russia was the ideal society and a wanted to
:21:51. > :22:00.know about it. The interest in Russia remained, the communism wore
:22:00. > :22:06.off pretty quickly. Why? Were you disillusioned Kris Smith by Hungary
:22:06. > :22:15.perhaps? Long before Hungary. It was 1956 when I was an
:22:15. > :22:22.undergraduate. I can't remember now. I suppose I spent so much time
:22:22. > :22:31.denying the of these events in front of our rise at school. I want
:22:31. > :22:38.to bring it right up-to-date mark. It strikes me as a connection. In
:22:38. > :22:43.Democracy you are portraying... when you look at British politics
:22:43. > :22:50.today - the first Coalition since the war - are you interested in
:22:50. > :22:59.engaging with that for a fiction? A new play? I would like to write a
:22:59. > :23:08.play about the publication of England, that idea has fallen out
:23:08. > :23:13.of no way. Particularly complex IDs in Germany because all German
:23:13. > :23:20.governments are Coalition government. We have complexity
:23:20. > :23:30.inside our and hence. But I said in the post trip to the play that you
:23:30. > :23:38.can never have a Coalition in this country - the thought is impossible.
:23:38. > :23:47.-- the postscript to the play. is in your head right now? Nothing.
:23:47. > :23:51.It is an empty space. At the moment I have several plays being revised.
:23:51. > :23:58.Is it stifling? Ku are still a creative artist and you want to get
:23:58. > :24:04.on and you and there are constantly asking you to do revivals of all