What is the first news event you can recall?
We bought a black-and-white TV so that we could watch the coronation in 1953. A lot of people on our street came round, as much to admire the television as to watch the ceremony. They ate salted peanuts, drank spirits and smoked like chimneys. Our sitting room was fugged up for weeks.
What is the biggest problem of all?
A billion people aren’t doing too badly. Seven billion would like to share in our prosperity. How do we give them that opportunity?
If you could spend a day in one city or place at one moment in history, when and where would that be?
I’d like to have been in the White House for the famous “bank holiday” on 6th March 1933, to observe Franklin D Roosevelt. After the collapse of the banks, he closed down the system for four days in order to reboot capitalism. Capitalists were convinced he would destroy it. The tension must have been unbearable.
What is your favourite quotation?
“In a football match everything is complicated by the presence of the other team.” Jean-Paul Sartre.
If you were given £1m to spend on other people, what would you spend it on and why?
I’m a big fan of the Howard League for Penal Reform. I also admire Reprieve. Anything to help people out of jail, or under sentence of death. Rachel Kushner’s great essay on abolishing prison would be sent to all MPs.
Which of your ancestors or relatives are you most proud of?
I’ve got four children, now in their forties, and I’m bewildered by the ease, grace and kindness with which they negotiate problems that once tied me up in knots. There’s no other word for them but “good.”
What have you changed your mind about?
When I wrote The Absence of War in 1993, inspired by Neil Kinnock’s doomed Labour campaign of the previous year, I thought British democracy was flawed but genuine. I never imagined that after so many years of Conservative governments, shameless financial corruption would destroy the integrity of UK politics.
What would people be surprised to know about you?
I was twice asked to be on Strictly Come Dancing. I was twice asked to write Star Wars, and once to co-direct it.
What is the last piece of music, play, novel or film that brought you to tears?
Ella Risbridger’s Midnight Chicken is a mixture of memoir and great recipes. She and her boyfriend, whom she calls the Tall Man, learned to cook together. When, towards the end of this gorgeously written cookbook, the Tall Man dies of cancer aged 28, I was overwhelmed.
What do you most regret?
In the last century, Bertolt Brecht, John Osborne and Samuel Beckett all made lasting changes to the art form they worked in. In this century, no one has.
“We Travelled: Essays and Poems” by David Hare is out from Faber & Faber
