True colours - writers on the Iraq War/LeCarrePinterTerkelTheroux etc.

[TacticalPeek]

True colours


In 1937 WH Auden and Stephen Spender asked 150
writers for their views on the Spanish Civil War. The
result was the book Authors Take Sides. Jean
Moorcroft Wilson and Cecil Woolf have repeated the
exercise, asking literary figures if they were for or
against the Iraq war and whether they thought it would
bring lasting peace and stability

Saturday February 14, 2004
The Guardian

Dannie Abse | Beryl Bainbridge | Julian Barnes | Jim Crace |
Louis de Bernières | Margaret Drabble | Duncan Fallowell |
Antonia Fraser | Nadine Gordimer | David Guterson | David Hare |
John Heath-Stubbs | Michael Holroyd | John Keegan | Thomas
Keneally | Francis King | John le Carré | David Lodge | Nicholas
Mosley | Sara Paretsky | Harold Pinter | Alan Sillitoe | Studs
Terkel | Paul Theroux | DM Thomas



Jim Crace

It was never likely that the violent overthrow of a regime with
base standards by a couple of governments with double
standards would add much to the gaiety of nations.

-----

John le Carré

I opposed the war before it began, wrote against it in the Times
and marched against it in London. I believed then, and believe
now, that this illegal and unprovoked invasion will lead to greater
instability and suffering in the region than existed before it was
launched.

But we should not overlook the damage it has done to us, and to
our leaders: the damage to our reputation in the world, and to
our self-respect. The lies and falsifications concocted by the two
main aggressors and cravenly echoed by the appallingly docile
American and British media will reverberate to our disgrace for
generations to come. We in the west will of course quickly
forget. The victims never will.


more

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1147686,00.html


(found at Atrios' blog, Eschaton)