Battleangel

Due to ill health the lecture was pre-recorded and Pinter obviously could not make the trip to Sweden, but as could be expected, the speech was a festival of verbal attacks on Britain and America.

BBC - Bush and Blair slated by Pinter - “The truth is something entirely different,” Pinter added. “The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.”

Pinter said that since World War II the US government “supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world”.

“I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile.”

He added: “You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good.“

Referring to Blair’s support for the US-led war on Iraq, Pinter described the “pathetic and supine” Great Britain as “a bleating little lamb tagging behind (the US) on a lead”.

Reuters - Pinter attacks U.S. policies in Nobel lecture - His frailty and hoarse voice added to the drama of a speech peppered with the potent silences of his plays like “The Birthday Party” and “The Caretaker”, which gave rise to the term “Pinteresque”. Behind him in the studio was a photo of the London-born playwright in more robust times.

Relentless in his criticism of the United States, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, Pinter expanded the criticism to “the majority of politicians” who weave “a vast tapestry of lies” to keep themselves in power.

He concluded by calling for an “unflinching, unswerving and fierce intellectual determination as citizens to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”.

“If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision, we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us: the dignity of man.”