For further details on the production of "One for the Road" please refer to the Plays section

H.P.: I don't really see One for the Road as a metaphor. For anything. It describes a state of affairs in which there are victims of torture. You have the torturer, you have the victims. And you can see that two of the victims have been physically tortured.

N.H.: So, these things which you wrote about then as metaphors have become facts now?

H.P.: There are at least ninety countries that practise torture now quite commonly - as an accepted routine. With any imprisonment, with any arrest, torture goes with it. And on both sides of the fence, Communist and non-Communist. In fact more on what's called "our" side of the fence-I refer particularly to Central and South America-than on what's called "their" side of the fence.

Certainly in terms of actual physicalll brutality, by which I mean murder and rape, which are the given facts in One for the Road. However, the distinction between then and now is that then, in 1957, the concentration camps were still an open wound which it was impossible to ignore, whereas now it's only too easy to ignore the horror of what's going on around us. There's too much of it.

N.H.: Yet someone looking back and wondering what was happening in the world at that time sould think that these early plays might be reflceting your unease about the Hungarian Revolution and the Soviet annexation of East Europe.

H.P.:Except that one doesn't normally write about today, but yesterday - or even the day before yesterday. In 1948 I wa a conscientious objector. That was a political act. Iwas terribly disturbed as a young man by the Cold War. And McCarthyism. I smelt that American thing a mile off, actually. And it was very strong. Its stink is still with us. A profound hypocrisy. "They" the mosters, "we" the good. In 1948 the Russian suppression of Eastern Europe was an obvious and brutal fact, but I felt very strongly then and feel as strongly now that we have an obligation to subject our own actions and attitudes to an equivalent critical and moral scrutiny.

N.H.: So was there anything particular that prompted you to write One for the Road?

H.P.:Except that one doesn't normally write about today, but yesterday - or even the day before yesterday. In 1948 I was a conscientious objector. That was a political act. I was terribly disturbed as a young man by the Cold War. And McCarthyism. I smelt that American thing a mile off, actually. And it was very strong. Its stink is still with us. A profound hypocrisy. "They" the mosters, "we" the good. In 1948 the Russian suppression of Eastern Europe was an obvious and brutal fact, but I felt very strongly then and feel as strongly now that we have an obligation to subject our own actions and attitudes to an equivalent critical and moral scrutiny.

N.H.: So was there anything particular that prompted you to write One for the Road?

H.P.: Yes, there was. Ive been concerned, for a number of years now, more and more with two things. One is the fact of torture, of official torture, subscribed to by so many governemtns. And the other is the whole nuclear situation. I've been a member of CND for some years now and have been quite active in one way or the otherSÇIn Turkey, in the last year, members of the Turkish Peace Association-the equivalent of CND if you like - were imprisoned for 8 years' hard labour for being members of the Turkish Peace Association. They're all extremely respectable and in some cases distinguished people. I go to know about this, and went into it. In investigation the Turkish situation I found something that I was slightly aware of but had no idea of the depths of: that the Turkish prisons, in which there are thousands of political prisoners, really are among the worst in the world. After arrest, a political prisoner is held incommunicado for 45 days, under martial law. Torture is systematic. People are crippled every day. This is documented by the Helsinki Watch Committee Amnesty International, International PEN and so on, and hardly denied by the Turkish authorities, who don't give a fuck because they know they're on safe ground since they have American subscription and American weapons. They're on the frontier of Russia and it's very important to America that Turkey is one of "us".

However, I found out a good deal more about the Turkish prisons and I've been in touch with Turkish people here. I then found myself at a party, where I came across two Turkish girls, extremely attractive and intelligent young women, and I asked them what they thought about this trial which had recently taken place, the sentencesSÇand they said "Oh, well it was probably deserved". "What do you mean by that, why was it probably deserved?" They said "Well they were probably communists. We have to protect ourselves against communism". I said, "When you say "probably", what kind of facts do you have?" They of course had no facts at all at their fingertips. They were ignorant, in fact. I then asked them whether they knew what Turkish military prisons like and about torture in Turkey, and they shrugged and said "Well Communists are communists, you know." "But what do you have to say about torture?" I asked. They looked at me and one of them said, "Oh you are a man of such imagination". I said " Do you mean it's worse for me than for the victims?" They gave yet another shrug and said, "Yes possibly". Whereupon instead of strangling them, I came back immediately, sat down and, it's true, out of rage started to write "One for the Road". It was a very immediate thing, yes. But it wasn't only that that cased me to write the play. The subject was on my mind.