The Dignity of a Man

Harold Pinter has died. He was a fabulously great writer. I remember when I first took up acting, doing a scene from the Caretaker. It totally fired up my imagination. I became a Pinter fanatic. I ended up buying the multi-volume collection of all his works.

No one quite wrote plays like Pinter. His plays, The Homecoming, The Caretaker, The Birthday Party are hilarious, mysterious, hard, brilliant. Very much like the man. When he won the Nobel Prize in 2005 he delivered a blistering speech about the Iraq debacle. Warmed my heart.

His work can't be reduced to politics, but I do share much of his supremely caustic view of the American Empire. We must always look in the mirror and try to discern the truth.

"When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us. I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man." - Harold Pinter