Martin Amis - Author HARDtalk


Martin Amis - Author

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England and South Wales this morning. To the Midlands, and

:00:04.:00:07.

northern England and North Wales, showers could return to eastern

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counties as well. Hit and miss, though. In northern Britain, dry

:00:15.:00:19.

and bright. Further south, low to mid-twenties. It is warming up.

:00:19.:00:24.

Wednesday will see the peak in the temperatures and humidity. The heat

:00:24.:00:30.

will build more widely in England and Wales, we could see the the

:00:30.:00:37.

mid-20s. We could get some thunder on Wednesday and Thursday. It is

:00:37.:00:41.

warming up in England and Wales, but it could turn thundery for

:00:41.:00:46.

Scotland and Northern Ireland. That's all for now. More details on

:00:46.:00:56.
:00:56.:01:04.

the thunderstorms heading our way Hello. This is BBC News. The

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headlines: The Syrian conflict dominates at the G8 summit. After

:01:07.:01:10.

tense talks, Presidents Obama and Putin admit they have different

:01:10.:01:13.

perspectives on the way forward but say they both want to stop the

:01:13.:01:17.

violence. However there is some progress as the US and European

:01:17.:01:18.

leaders officially launch negotiations on a vast

:01:18.:01:21.

transatlantic free trade pact, which David Cameron says will add

:01:21.:01:24.

billions to the global economy. Veteran broadcaster Stuart Hall is

:01:24.:01:34.
:01:34.:01:36.

sentenced to 15 months in jail for sexually abusing girls. Solicitors

:01:36.:01:39.

representing some of the victims say proceedings are under way to

:01:39.:01:43.

sue Hall and the BBC for damages. Moors Murderer Ian Brady is seen by

:01:43.:01:47.

the public for the first time in decades via a video link from a

:01:47.:01:50.

high security hospital at a mental health hearing. Brady wants to move

:01:50.:01:52.

to a prison where he won't be force-fed.

:01:52.:01:55.

The art collector Charles Saatchi says pictures of him holding his

:01:55.:01:59.

wife Nigella Lawson by the throat are horrific but were just a

:01:59.:02:02.

playful tiff. Tonight Scotland Yard said a 70-year-old man voluntarily

:02:02.:02:05.

attended a central London police station and accepted a caution for

:02:05.:02:10.

assault. Now on BBC News - writer Martin

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:02:20.:02:25.

Amis joins Stephen Sackur on Welcome to HARDtalk. Early in his

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writing career, my guest was pigeon-holed as the enfant terrible

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of the British literary world. Four decades on, Martin Amis remains one

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of the most successful and closely scrutinised novelists of his

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generation. Much of his fiction fizzes with dark energy. In his

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world, greed, lust, addiction and ignorance loom large. And yet, he

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says that he writes in a celebratory spirit. What exactly

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Welcome to HARDtalk. Your latest novel is a satire on a state of

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England novel, but nobody can read it and conclude that you believe

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that England today is a healthy society. One would not write a

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satirical novel claiming that. I do not think that anyone believes that

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everything is going fine. I think there are some fascinating

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contradictions in British society and it is historically explicable,

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but this huge interest in the trivial, celebrity, shallow

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culture... Surfaces, appearances. I can only think that this is what

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happens to a one-time great power does no longer reverberates around

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the world as it once did. I think we got through that demotion

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because the ideology was saying that we do not like empire, if

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anything, we are ashamed of even having had one. So we make the

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switch, but subconsciously, it is in people's subliminal minds.

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you care about the state of England? Yes, very much. I have

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three children on this side of the Atlantic. We should make it plain

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that for the last couple of years or so, you have been living in New

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York. Some saw the book, Lionel Asbo, as a kind of middle finger

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salute as you left England. We knew that would happen. My wife and I.

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That was just unfortunate timing. So there was not any element of

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that? None. I had almost finished the book when I had left. The first

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draft was done before we even mentioned moving to America. As I

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was on my way out, every chance I got, every public appearance, I

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said, it is nothing to do with disaffection with England. It still

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came out that way. A vicious V-sign from the airport. It never was that.

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I take that point. But nonetheless, you had talked about characterising

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shallowness, the sort of selfish nature of current English society

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and culture, but doesn't it go beyond that? There is something

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truly depressing about the dominance of casual violence, of

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greed, of pornography, a sort of aggressiveness that invades every

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corner of the London that you portray. Yes, but it is written

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with affection. Affection for what? For England, for the English. What

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I miss most in America, the Americans are just as tolerant and

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generous as most English people are, British people. Anyone who has

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chosen to enter in the spirit of life beyond our shores. But they do

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not have the wit. Americans are not witty. It is that kind of society.

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If it is an immigrant society, you are very sensitive about giving

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offence, and a joke is always an assertion of superiority. If I may

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pursue that line, a joke is an assertion of superiority, isn't

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there a sense in which you are asserting a sense of superiority

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over your characters. So many of your characters are drawn from the

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working class or even the underclass, and they are

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predominantly men, who, coming back to this point about banality, greed,

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lust, violence, they are unpleasant characters in so many different

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ways. As a man from a comfortable background, looking at the working

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class, are you not condescending to them? That is my right to address.

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It is about the underclass. It was questioned for the first time in my

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life in this book and I have been doing it for 40 years, writing

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about that class. The absentees in my novels are the middle class. I

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take the extremes at the top and the bottom. The middle class are

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well served by any number of novelists but they do not interest

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me. But is the working class well served by you? Yes, I should think

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so. Don't you laugh at them?Yes. But I also exult them. Do not

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forget that the other main character is angelic, superior to

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me morally, in decency and all the rest, thirst for education. Writing

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a novel is a very crude business. If Lionel has to be that bad, then

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Desmond has to be that good and that is how novels are put together.

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Do you care how your novels are received any more? You have bust

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your guts to get these books out. Does it matter to you how they are

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received? That's all you have. Authors have letters from readers,

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but reviews are all you have. have not been good, have they? They

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have not been good for Lionel Asbo, and they have not been that great

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for a number of your later novels. That is not the case. The Pregnant

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Widow got reviews, House Of Meetings before that got even

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better reviews. I occupy a perculiar position in England.

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People think that there is no limit to how offensive they can be when

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they write about me. I know what you mean because obviously I have

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looked at some reviews, and maybe the worst were for Yellow Dog, and

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some of those was so brutal, I was sitting there thinking, if Martin

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Amis read these, what must have he thought? Particularly from a fellow

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novelist. It is so downright damming of you and the book.

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think it is partly to do with my father. When I started out, it was

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not a great disadvantage to be the son of a young writer, if anything,

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it was an advantage. But then the whole question of heredity

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swivelled. I lack legitimacy for this reason, it seems. That the

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lingering notion is that I inherited a full set of writer's

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genes and it has not been difficult for me, or I do not have the usual

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pains that all writers have had. But there is no upper limit to how

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offensive people are. With Yellow Dog, it was not just reviews,

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anyone who could hold a pen was queuing up. Paul Johnson wrote and

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said it was one of those little episodes of militant anti-

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intellectualism. How thick-skinned are you? Being the son of a writer

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helps. I would see my father get a battering every now and again. It

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makes you a bit more detached from the whole business. What strikes me,

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sometimes in this chair I sound like a pop psychiatrist, but you

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have always had a complicated relationship with the media.

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have been a journalist. You spend a lot of your spare time actually

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writing journalism and travelling the world for newspapers. You have

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also lead a pretty public life, and at times you have appeared to quite

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enjoy the limelight and being in the press and on TV, and at the

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same time, you seem to deeply resent a lot of the journalistic

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coverage of you. I sometimes satirise the press in Yellow Dog

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and again in Lionel Asbo. That is absolutely forbidden. They think

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they made you. So you are being an ingrate if you complain about the

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press. The literary novel was quite an obscure activity until about

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1980. Then the media have got so fat that it had to start including

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literary writers. Because they had run out of rapists and boxers and

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ne'er-do-wells and depressed comedians. They were reduced to

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writing about us. But it is sort of a Faustian bargain. I wonder

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whether you reflect and look at the decisions taken by other top

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writers, I'm thinking like Don DeLillo and others who have very

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much kept their distance from the media and living any of their life

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in public, and they have said, judge me on the novels and nothing

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else. And you have never done that. No, I have not. I enjoy the

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interaction. Writing is tremendously solitary. You have to

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have a huge appetite for solitude and you have to be most alive then.

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But you get bored. I do not get bored, but it is just a change. A

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dramatic change from your average about freedom. You have written

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quite a lot about how important writing as an expression of freedom

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is to you. Writing is freedom, you said. That is why it is such an

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agony to contemplate the efforts of writers who are trying to write in

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unfree societies. How have you responded in the last few days to

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the mountain of new evidence that seems to be gathering that your

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homeland in the United Kingdom, there are places where unbeknownst

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to us, a lot of our Communications, our telephone calls, internet and

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digital communications, are in one way or another, being marked,

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monitored and stored. Does that worry you? Yes, it does. You cannot

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help but be passionately pro-Obama when you see who he was up against

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in the last election, but he has perpetrated quite a few things on

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the sly that I much resented. This is certainly one of them. It will

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be interesting to see if he has to Looking from an international

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Looking from an international perspective again, Ai Weiwei who is

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controversial in his own country was shocked. He said that the US

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was acting like China. With these thoughts about freedom and what

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America symbolises and represents to those not living there, I wonder

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if this is changing? I do not see how it can not. How it can do

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otherwise. One almost feels it as a violation. It is a clear abuse of

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power. Another area linked to this because it is no doubt one of the

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motivations for the new reach of the intelligence services. The

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post-9/11 concern about the threat of Islamic militants. Something

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that you have written and thought about and responded to. Not so very

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long ago, about seven years ago, you responded in a very passionate

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way to revelations about a particular plot to blow up

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airliners, you remember, over the skies of the Atlantic. At that

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point, you said and you were thinking aloud, that this prompts

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an urge to see that the Muslim community should suffer until it

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gets its own house in order. Yes, the journalists who came to see me

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and had flown across the Atlantic without a book like everyone else

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on that flight. This incensed me. It seemed like a victory for

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ignorance and incuriosity. Wasn't it also an over-reaction from the

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security people on the ground? This idea about getting the balance

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right about security and basic freedoms? Once you fall into a

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:18:31.:18:33.

fearful mindset then you get the balance wrong. And you say things

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as for the shires I -- as foolish as I said. I did not recommend the

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course of action but I floated it. It is a pernicious thing to say

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because collective punishment is always a bad idea. I ceased to

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believe that later on that afternoon. I had a chat with a

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friend and he said, "If you do that then you would turn them all

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against us." I realised that. It was the first time when I thought

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that maybe they were stronger than us. What you have said since is

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that you are not Islamophobic but you concede that you could be

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Islamist-a-phobic. There is an Islamic heresy or sophistry whereby

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you justify killing not only others but also your fellows, your co-

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religionists, by the following means: If they are good Muslims,

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they will go to heaven. If they are bad Muslims, they go to hell. That

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:19:55.:20:00.

is what Islam calls people like Osama Bin Laden. A takfir, a

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takfiri. I'm certainly against that. Where does that leave you? You do

:20:13.:20:16.

get events in the Middle East and you write about them. You wrote a

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book about the second plane about five years ago which looked at the

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post-9/11 world. Given your concerns, when you look at a

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country like Tunisia which is now governed by a party that is

:20:25.:20:28.

Islamist or indeed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or indeed

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maybe even Turkey with Recep Tayyip Erdogan - do you conclude that

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these governments are a long-term danger to your values in the West?

:20:39.:20:49.
:20:49.:20:50.

No, I don't think the governments are. The Arab Spring is already

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looking like the Arab Winter. It is not at all surprising that

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democracy has not taken hold in the way we all hoped that it would. It

:20:59.:21:02.

is a foreign idea and it would take decades if not centuries to become

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the norm in the Arab world. I do not fear the governments, even if

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they are the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the individual. Recent outrages

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we have had, the Boston bombing for instance and Woolwich, the stabbing,

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seemed to me to come under the heading of what was called home-

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:21:33.:21:33.

grown terrorism, where it is alienation that makes you act. You

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tart it up with a few slogans which you find online to make it look as

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though you are protesting against the invasion of Iraq. Before we end,

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I want to come back to your creative writing and your fiction.

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I know that you are working on a new novel about Auschwitz. That is

:21:56.:22:01.

a subject you have visited before. Does the creative process get

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harder? It does and it does not. What falls off is the flowing

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inspiration you have when you are younger. I know you have discussed

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this with one author and he said that most good books are written by

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people under 40. Presumably, he thinks that that is not an accident

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and maybe you agree with him. do lose that flow. But you gain in

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technique. You know more firmly what goes where and modulation and

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how to tell a story. Not as good a novelist but a better storyteller.

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Do you struggle to find new subjects? I know that - it is

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facile to say but when you have done a Holocaust book, you could

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say that if it has raised issues that you have looked at in other

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Apology for the loss of subtitles for 61 seconds

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state of England novels - are you Dickens died early as well as

:24:14.:24:16.

Shakespeare and Jane Austen, at 43, and the younger Bronte sister died

:24:17.:24:26.
:24:27.:24:35.

at 30. Now Herrmann Walter is 97. You seem to be sure that in your

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lifetime, you cannot expect to be judged fairly about the quality of

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your work. You say that what really matters is whether you are being

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read in 50 years' time. Do you thank you will be in 50 years'

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time? That is why my eyes light up when I see young readers come to

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signings and readings and see 25 year-olds who have my book. I think

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that that is 50 years right there. You realise that all of the

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reviewing and even lit crit is mostly just rhetoric. There is no

:25:10.:25:13.

way of separating the excellent from the less excellent. The only

:25:13.:25:16.

thing which does that is time. You will not be around for that, as my

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:25:26.:25:27.

father used to complain. It was no use to him, posterity. I think that

:25:27.:25:30.

that was just bravado. We all want to live on. That is partly why we

:25:30.:25:34.

have children. The desire for some kind of immortality is a very deep

:25:34.:25:41.

drive. In your case, it is the children and the books. Yes. As a

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way of continuing. Martin Amis, we have to end there. Thank you.

:25:45.:25:55.
:25:55.:26:17.

You would be well-advised to keep an eye on the forecast. Some big

:26:17.:26:24.

changes coming up, especially in England and Wales. We will have hot,

:26:24.:26:28.

humid, thundery air. It is coming from France. Already overnight we

:26:28.:26:31.

could see some showery bursts developing in southern counties.

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Hit and miss, but some sharp ones possible. Most places will be dry

:26:37.:26:43.

with broken cloud the further north. single figures. A mild night,

:26:43.:26:49.

turning muggy in southern areas. Humidity developing. Some seem

:26:49.:26:54.

missed in the south-west. Through Tuesday, one band of showers Chris

:26:54.:27:04.
:27:04.:27:11.

Froome England and Wales. Many places will avoid the rain, though.

:27:11.:27:16.

-- ships through England and Wales. We could see some downpours through

:27:16.:27:21.

south-east England. That threat increases towards the evening. 21

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his conservative. Mid-20s possible in some places. -- is Conservative.

:27:27.:27:32.

We will have a nice day. Not desperately warm. Mid-to-high teams.

:27:32.:27:37.

With light winds it could feel quite nice. -- mid-to-high teens.

:27:37.:27:42.

For Wales, we could have some showers drifting south to north.

:27:42.:27:46.

Plenty of dry weather in between. As there will be in the south-west.

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The threat of showers easing off. If you're heading to the beach it

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could be misty and murky. Into the evening, we have the increasing

:27:55.:27:59.

threat of showers in the south-east of England. That threat expands to

:27:59.:28:04.

other parts of England and Wales as this weather front continues to

:28:04.:28:08.

move further north. Don't take the detail to literally through the

:28:08.:28:12.

middle of the week. But in general terms it looks like England and

:28:12.:28:16.

Wales will see the highest temperatures, but also the highest

:28:16.:28:20.

humidity. That means heavy thundery downpours. In Scotland and Northern

:28:20.:28:25.

Ireland, not as hot and humid but drier and brighter. Don't take the

:28:25.:28:29.

detail too literally. We will have some bursts of rain, but hazy

:28:29.:28:34.

sunshine as well. The mid-to-high 20s in parts of the south-east.

:28:34.:28:38.

Cooler in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Looking further ahead, it

:28:38.:28:42.

doesn't look like the heat will last long. It looks like we could

:28:42.:28:46.

see some wet weather in England and Wales on Thursday. More persistent

:28:46.:28:51.

heavy thundery downpours. To her again, it will not be long before

:28:52.:28:56.

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