The Interview

KIRSTY WARK: You call it "Art, truth and politics". I mean, that do you feel that as a writer you have a responsibility, no matter how oblique the political references are in your plays, to be more politically explicit, as it were, as a campaigner?HAROLD PINTER: My plays... (lick).... I've always dealt with erm political... matters, really. Erm. You say, "obliquely". Well, perhaps. But they've always dealt with power. (Lick, lick) The powerful and the powerless. Erm. (Lick). But the longer I live the more I feel that I have an obligation (lick) to be very very precise (lick) and concrete (lick) about the way power is manifested, and, erm, in this world, and the way, hypocrisy is, erm, manifested really. So I think it's, erm, an obligation on me as a citizen to be very very clear about what I actually think. I think ,by the way, it's an obligation on everybody.BBC 2, Newsnight, 2006Content Warning:Infrequent Strong Language