Howard Brenton

Howard Brenton’s The Churchill Play is being revived by the RSC at the Barbican Theatre in November. His first novel, Diving for pearls, will be published next spring. His poem in this issue is related to a play called H.I.D. which he is writing for the Mickery Theatre in Amsterdam.

Poem: ‘The walls of Spandau speak’

Howard Brenton, 27 October 1988

The day the Nazi died his prison walls Were just hard dust Waiting to be smashed by demolition balls

Swung from cranes to crack the hardened crust of that dead history – The walls of Spandau thought ‘We know we must

Be pulverised to blow the memory Of the horror that we held Away into win air. Now we’re free

The past falls with us, we are dispelled With the old lies...

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