Introduced by Melvyn Bragg
All over the world writers and artists are in conflict with authoritarian rule. Tonight 2nd House presents the work of four individuals whose freedom of expression has, for differing reasons, been curtailed or suppressed.
The Axe by Ludvik Vaculik
(an extract from the novel banned in Czechoslovakia after 1968)
Adapted by Neville Smith
With Brian Peck, Ray Lonnen, Susan Jameson and Petra Markham
Vascu is a journalist, Honzo a bus driver. Both have fallen foul of their bosses.
Maria Santiago
Knowing how artists and singers who supported Allende's Popular Unity Government have disappeared or been murdered, Maria Santiago dare not return to Chile. In any event her paintings would not be exhibited and her poems would go unpublished.
A Matter of Taste
by Alex La Guma
(a story banned in South Africa)
With Alton Kumalo, Louis Mahoney and Paul Jones
' It's a matter of money, pal. I worked six months in that cafe and I never heard nobody order sheep's head and beans!'
Cancer Ward
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
(an extract from the novel refused publication in the USSR)
Adapted by Tony Cash
With Sara Craze, Keith Ashton
Plus songs by dissident composers and performers; poems read by Alfred Burke; and an interview with the philosopher Stuart Hampshire, a member of Writers and Scholars International, an organisation which exists to study censorship.
Keeping up with Jones: page 4