20 Questions With…Richard Norton-Taylor

After studying at Oxford and the College of Europe in Bruges, Richard Norton-Taylor joined the Guardian newspaper in 1975 as Europe correspondent based in Brussels.

Once back in Britain, he investigated official secrecy, behind-the-scenes decision-making in Government, and the activities of the security and intelligence services. In 1986, Norton-Taylor was awarded the Freedom of Information Campaign award for exposing government secrecy and team press awards for reporting on the Aitken and Hamilton cases. In 1998, he was appointed security affairs editor at the Guardian.

As well as his regular broadsheet journalism, Norton-Taylor has penned a number of books including, Whose Land is it Anyway?, an investigation into land ownership (1981); In Defence of the Realm? The Case for Accountable Security and Intelligence Services (1990); Truth is a Difficult Concept: Inside the Scott Inquiry (1995); and Knee Deep in Dishonour, on the arms-to-Iraq affair (1996).

Justifying War, based on the transcripts of the recent Hutton Inquiry into the death of government arms advisor Dr David Kelly, is the most recent in a series of tribunal plays. Norton-Taylor has edited four previous inquiries for the Tricycle stage: Half the Picture – The Scott Arms to Iraq Inquiry, Nuremberg – The 1946 War Crimes Trial, Srebrenica – The Hague 1996 Rule 61 Hearings and The Colour of Justice – The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, all of which were subsequently broadcast by the BBC.

Date & place of birth
In Buckinghamshire on D day, which you may or may not know was 6 June 1944.

Lives now in…
At the bottom of Muswell Hill. Well, where Crouch End meets Muswell Hill, in north London.

Training

I had no professional journalistic training as such. I was a freelance journalist in Brussels before I started writing for the Guardian.

First big break
It was writing about Britain’s early relations as a new member of the Europe community.

Career highlights
I got the Freedom of Information Campaign award for exposing government secrecy in 1986, and since then, apart from the Guardian helping to expose Jonathan Aitken and Neil Hamilton, a big highlight was the success of the first of the Tricycle Tribunal Plays, as we call them. Half the Picture, in 1994, was an adaptation of the Scott Arms to Iraq story which won various awards. Then in 1999, I wrote The Colour of Justice for the Tricycle. It was based on the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and also received plaudits and was actually performed at National Theatre.

Favourite actors
There are so many different ones, it’s impossible to say. Michael Gambon is certainly one and Vanessa Redgrave.

Favourite playwright
I can say David Hare, because he brings out contemporary issues so well in the theatre.

What play would you most like to have written?
I think Hamlet is wonderful because it addresses an individual’s predicament on such a large, ultimately tragic scale.

If you were an actor, what role would you most like to play?
King Lear, because it’s such a powerful and tragic role.

What’s the difference between writing as a journalist & a playwright? Do you have a preference?

Well, I don’t prefer either. Obviously, I do more journalism than writing for theatre, but it’s a great challenge and in some ways more satisfying actually. That’s because it’s easier to gauge an audience’s response, and you can see the bums on seats in a theatre, whereas with a column, you don’t know how people respond.

What first made you want to write for the stage?

Nicolas Kent (artistic director of the Tricycle). He suggested that I write Half the Picture. We were actually on the tennis court having a game when he came up with the idea. Before that I’d thought about writing for theatre in a general way but not with any specific play in mind of my own. I really enjoy theatre, but I don’t go as much as I’d like, so I’m keen in principle rather than practice!

What’s the best thing you’ve seen on stage recently?

The Price by Arthur Miller. The acting is great and the themes have a universal relevance, although it’s set in a very particular era in recent American history. The characters are recognisable and easy to empathise with in their different ways.

What would you advise the government to secure the future of British theatre?

Treat it with respect and, as successive French governments have done in the past, give it decent funding. It’s important for the government to acknowledge that theatre should play a much bigger role in society as a whole rather than just being an expensive pastime for those who can afford it, thanks to the high price of tickets.

If you could swap places with one person (living or dead) for a day, who would it be?
Winston Churchill, I suppose, because of the pressures on him. He was in the middle of one of Britain’s most acute crises and coped with it.

Favourite books
Dostoyevsky is one of my favourite authors – I love The Brothers Karamazov. I also like good spy novels, notably those by John Le Carre.

Favourite holiday destination
How about the jewels from both sides of the Mediterranean: Morocco and Corsica.

Favourite website
As a journalist, Google.

What made you want to adapt the Hutton transcripts for the stage? Why wasn’t reporting them in the newspaper enough?


When you are reporting this kind of inquiry in the newspaper, you are writing in a few hundred words the top line of a particular day’s evidence, and then you go forward to the next day and you don’t know how people are responding. Sometimes it all just becomes a series of separate headlines really. Editing the whole inquiry to two hours plus in a theatre, where you can tell the whole story from beginning to end, is a challenging but useful exercise and certainly in the public interest. We also have organised audience discussions for after the midweek performances to encourage debate and find out what people thought of it.

What I found difficult and unique about the adaptation of this particular inquiry is that the gap between what actually happened – the actual evidence – and the production is much shorter and, therefore, a lot of the evidence coming out of the Hutton Inquiry is still fresh in people’s minds. Inevitably, there’ll be some gaps in the theatre production, but I’ve certainly covered all the important pieces of evidence directly or indirectly. Also, sometimes witnesses are talking about other characters, other witnesses which you don’t meet, because you can’t have every witness or the play would be too long!

Have you ever written plays based in fiction rather than fact?
No, I’ve not written any fiction at all, but I’d like to sometime. This has spurred me to write a fictional piece for theatre.

What are the difficulties or skills needed to adapt real events dramatically?
You’ve got to have the journalistic skill, which is to edit down and draw out the significant facts. A journalist does that every day, but in the theatre, you need to sustain the audience’s interest by picking out exchanges and humour to bring characters to life so the audience can empathise. Distilling an inquiry means there’s not much movement – you have the witnesses in the box and the lawyers cross-examining – so everything is in the words. It’s really more of a challenge for the actors than if they were in a play written specifically for the stage. Here, as I say, everything is in the words, which have been spoken already in the inquiry.

What’s the most important thing you want people to take away from Justifying War?
That this is an unprecedented inquiry sparked by a personal tragedy, in the death of Dr Kelly. Also, what it says about an individual caught up in the important issues in the government’s case for war, notably through its dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programme and the government’s fight with the BBC and, finally, what it shows you more generally about how the Blair government and Whitehall works.

Was it hard to remain impartial?

It is important to be as impartial as possible because credibility is at stake. Nicolas Kent insists there is as much verisimilitude as possible. We must be fair and stick to the words, like in The Colour of Justice when we portrayed the Police officers, you have to understand the character’s point of view. If it becomes biased and characters become caricatures, it doesn’t encourage understanding.

What can you tell us about your next play?

We’re planning to do the Bloody Sunday inquiry, which is coming along slowly but fine. This inquiry started in 1998 and is still going on now, but that should be on next year sometime.

Anything else you’d like to add?
Just that the theatre is a great medium for addressing contemporary issues and, judging by the response to our other Tricycle plays, a majority of critics seem to agree.

– Richard Norton-Taylor was speaking to Hannah Kennedy

Justifying War runs at the Tricycle theatre until 6 December 2003.