My wife and I have just booked our flight and hotel in New York – we’re not in the habit of flying off for brief vacations like this but it’s a special occasion. Giant, an award-winning play about Roald Dahl and his antisemitism, opens on Broadway. I went to the first night at London’s Royal Court theatre and was both impressed and stunned – the latter because I’m sort of in it. Well, my voice is, played by an actor. The reason is that in 1983 where I worked for the New Statesman magazine, I interviewed Dahl after he’d reviewed a book about Israel. He went far beyond criticism of the Jewish state and splashed around in ugly and undeniable antisemitism. Mind you, today it might not cause such a shock. The article did cause quite a fuss back then however, and has over the years I’ve often been asked to talk about it. A few years ago, a young British director and playwright contacted me, we spoke several times about what happened, and he went off for a year to write a script. When he showed me the result, I realized that this was something special, and so did other people. Including the great John Lithgow, who read it and was eager to play Dahl. The rest of the cast was just as impressive, the play received glowing reviews and won numerous awards, and now comes to North America – I hope to Toronto as well at some point.It's very strange suddenly hearing your words and a good imitation of your voice on stage, with someone as respected as Lithgow replying and repeatedly saying your name. I think I sank deeper into my chair when it first happened. Of all the things that I thought might happen in my life, this certainly wasn’t one of them!I write about this at some length in Diary of a Lowborn Cleric and I hope do the whole thing some justice. The timing of the play couldn’t, of course, be more pertinent. The issues discussed in the play – Israel, Palestine, Zionism, antisemitism, and so on – are more important and divisive now than I’ve ever seen them, and Giant is fair, balanced, and deeply intelligent and challenging in the way is deals with all of this. As for first-night parties, I suppose I could get used to them...