Thanks to Malcolm Paul for interviewing me for the legendary International Times. I was reminded of our discussion while at the National Gallery the other day, thinking about the significance to me of this “ornate gazebo” and what it represents: the raised dais and the portico with its commanding view of Trafalgar Square, which used to be the main entrance to the gallery and accessible from street level.

Like the headline says!

Here’s what I told Malcolm:

I was at the so-called Poll Tax Riot in Trafalgar Square on 31 March 1990. But I wasn’t in the middle of the square, in the melée, I was watching from the raised dais beneath the portico on the front of the National Gallery; with this struggle playing out in front of me, and all the history of power and its representation in the gallery behind me. But isn’t that kind of like the position of the novelist? Here I am in this privileged spot, this ornate gazebo, sandwiched between the historical struggle and the institutions of power, watching police vans being reversed at speed into the crowd, police horse charges, the crowd scattering, useless fusillades of sticks that have become detached from their placards… Just that now, the ornate gazebo I’m watching from isn’t the portico of the National Gallery, it’s ‘the novel’.

(*with apologies to Raymond Carver.)

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