Hot Irons: Diaries, Essays and Journalism 1980-1994

Howard Brenton has long been stuck with the label 'controversial'. Early in his career he was misquoted as wanting his plays to be like 'petrol bombs through the proscenium arch'. His Churchill Play foresaw a Britain where political dissidents were interned in concentration camps. His Romans in Britain was prosecuted by Mary Whitehouse. And there have been plays on Rudolf Hess, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Rushdie affair... This volume of essays and diaries, however, reveals a much more complex, humane and thoughtful person than the headlines and snap judgments would allow. The first part of the book offers a selection of occasional articles ranging back over fifteen years. Topics include the resignation of Margaret Thatcher and the legacy of Bertolt Brecht, the 'unbearable heaviness' of being English and thoughts on the avant-garde in Paris and Amsterdam, amongst much else. The second part consists of four diaries, all previously unpublished. They centre on research trips to Far North Queensland and to Moscow and the Ukraine, on rehearsals for his most recent play, Berlin Bertie, and on a country-wide tour of solo readings of The Romans in Britain which he undertook himself to raise funds to fight its prosecution. All very different, the diaries are a revelation both of the man and of the worlds he describes.