[NUJ Bristol] Terry Jones

Tony Gosling bristol@nuj.org.uk
Sat, 22 Feb 2003 23:26:07 +0000


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OK, George, make with the friendly bombs
http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,651594,00.html

Observer Worldview
The Bush files - Observer special

Terry Jones
Sunday February 17, 2002
The Observer

To prevent terrorism by dropping bombs on Iraq is such an obvious idea that 
I can't think why no one has thought of it before. It's so simple. If only 
the UK had done something similar in Northern Ireland, we wouldn't be in 
the mess we are in today.

The moment the IRA blew up the Horseguards' bandstand, the Government 
should have declared its own War on Terrorism. It should have immediately 
demanded that the Irish government hand over Gerry Adams. If they refused 
to do so - or quibbled about needing proof of his guilt - we could have 
told them that this was no time for prevarication and that they must hand 
over not only Adams but all IRA terrorists in the Republic. If they tried 
to stall by claiming that it was hard to tell who were IRA terrorists and 
who weren't, because they don't go around wearing identity badges, we would 
have been free to send in the bombers.

It is well known that the best way of picking out terrorists is to fly 
30,000ft above the capital city of any state that harbours them and drop 
bombs - preferably cluster bombs. It is conceivable that the bombing of 
Dublin might have provoked some sort of protest, even if just from James 
Joyce fans, and there is at least some likelihood of increased anti-British 
sentiment in what remained of the city and thus a rise in the numbers of 
potential terrorists. But this, in itself, would have justified the tactic 
of bombing them in the first place. We would have nipped them in the bud, 
so to speak. I hope you follow the argument.

Having bombed Dublin and, perhaps, a few IRA training bogs in Tipperary, we 
could not have afforded to be complacent. We would have had to turn our 
attention to those states which had supported and funded the IRA terrorists 
through all these years. The main provider of funds was, of course, the 
USA, and this would have posed us with a bit of a problem. Where to bomb in 
America? It's a big place and it's by no means certain that a small country 
like the UK could afford enough bombs to do the whole job. It's going to 
cost the US billions to bomb Iraq and a lot of that is empty countryside. 
America, on the other hand, provides a bewildering number of targets.

Should we have bombed Washington, where the policies were formed? Or should 
we have concentrated on places where Irishmen are known to lurk, like New 
York, Boston and Philadelphia? We could have bombed any police station and 
fire station in most major urban centres, secure in the knowledge that we 
would be taking out significant numbers of IRA sympathisers. On St 
Patrick's Day, we could have bombed Fifth Avenue and scored a bull's-eye.

In those American cities we couldn't afford to bomb, we could have rounded 
up American citizens with Irish names, put bags over their heads and flown 
them in chains to Guernsey or Rockall, where we could have given them food 
packets marked 'My Kind of Meal' and exposed them to the elements with a 
clear conscience.

The same goes for Australia. There are thousands of people in Sydney and 
Melbourne alone who have actively supported Irish republicanism by sending 
money and good wishes back to people in the Republic, many of whom are 
known to be IRA members and sympathisers. A well-placed bomb or two Down 
Under could have taken out the ringleaders and left the world a safer 
place. Of course, it goes without saying that we would also have had to 
bomb various parts of London such as Camden Town, Lewisham and bits of 
Hammersmith and we should certainly have had to obliterate, if not the 
whole of Liverpool, at least the Scotland Road area.

And that would be it really, as far as exterminating the IRA and its 
supporters. Easy. The War on Terrorism provides a solution so 
uncomplicated, so straightforward and so gloriously simple that it baffles 
me why it has taken a man with the brains of George W. Bush to think of it.

So, sock it to Iraq, George. Let's make the world a safer place.

http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,651594,00.html


A word in your shell-like
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,402366,00.html

Terry Jones tells Julia Eccleshare why he took up children's fiction

Saturday November 25, 2000
The Guardian

When Terry Jones was seven years old he wrote: "I'm hopping to be an 
actor." In a career that includes five years of Monty Python's Flying 
Circus, he has certainly fulfilled that hope. But he's also been a 
director, producer and, increasingly, a writer. "I now think that saying I 
wanted to be an actor was a kind of shorthand. What I've always wanted to 
do, is write. Writing is the beginning of everything."

Terry Jones's study feels and looks like a writer's room. His laptop is 
dwarfed by an enormous tome of historical documents: he's working on 
research for a book on Chaucer's death. And, he's just published The Knight 
and his Lady, his second book about Tom, a young squire in the Middle Ages.

He began to write for children when his daughter Sally was five. "I thought 
it would be nice to read her some fairy tales. I started reading Grimm's 
'Snow White' and when it got to the end I had to read out about how the 
wicked step-mother got punished by having to dance in the red-hot slippers 
until she fell down dead. I didn't like the idea of my little five-year-old 
going to sleep thinking 'I'm so glad they tortured that old woman to 
death', so I thought: 'Maybe I'll have a go.'"

With a week off from working on Ripping Yarns with Michael Palin, Jones sat 
down to write. "I'd never written a story before and I wrote two in the 
first day, and read them out to Sally when she came home from nursery. She 
seemed to like them so that encouraged me.

"I'd always liked myth, especially stories like 'The Emperor's New 
Clothes'. Any kid can understand it and yet it's got a very sophisticated 
political message. I wanted to be simple and mythic and I knew the stories 
had to be concise, probably because of writing for television."

Soon he had produced 30 stories, but getting them published was not quite 
so simple. Having teamed up with illustrator Michael Foreman, he sent them 
off to a publisher and went off to shoot The Life of Brian. Nothing 
happened. Then another publisher, who was was setting up on his own, 
stepped in. "He asked if I would like to be the first novel on the list, 
alongside a book of drawings by Paul McCartney."

Like everything else he does, Jones's writing for children is witty, 
original and entertaining. And, because after Sally there came Bill, and 
Jones believes in fair play, he set about writing a book for him. Bill 
wanted it to be about Vikings.

Jones was familiar with the Viking sagas because he'd looked into them as 
material for Python. Unfortunately, what he'd found was that they were 
rather boring. "I hadn't quite realised how pedestrian they were. I'd 
thought they'd be full of mystery and adventure. His own Saga of Erik the 
Viking was "what I'd always hoped the sagas were".

Weaving together the different strands of his work comes readily to Jones, 
who moves freely between performing, directing, writing screenplays of 
other people's books, writing his own books and researching.

"I've always liked writing and it seemed to come fairly easily. It's very 
different, and much more fun than writing sketches. Sketches are just 
lines. It's hard to tell whether they're funny or not." Writing a book is 
more of an adventure, he says. "I don't plan anything out, so if I'm in the 
middle of writing anything, I can't wait to get to my desk to find out what 
happens next."

But, despite the absence of a plan, he is very aware of his audience. 
Having known exactly who he was writing his first two children's books for, 
he ran into trouble with his third, Nicobobinus, until he found another 
child he could write for. "The thing about being a writer is that there is 
a very intimate bond with the reader because there is nothing in between. 
When you're reading a book in bed it's like having somebody whispering in 
your ear. With film or TV it's all to do with interpretation, so there's a 
lot between you and the original. You're not coming into contact with one 
mind."

To get back to being that one voice, Jones thought he'd recycle the 
research he had done for TV programmes on the crusades for another book. 
"The trouble was that I didn't really know enough about the 11th century, 
so I updated to the 14th and used my Chaucer research instead."

The result was The Knight and His Squire, a terrific adventure with robust 
characters and tremendous drama. It is told by young Tom speaking directly 
to his present-day contemporaries. The result is a refreshingly accessible 
historical novel, full of information but not weighed down by card-index 
detail.

By now writing entirely for his own entertainment, Jones ended it up in the 
air, meaning to come back and finish the story. After a long break, when he 
was diverted into dubbing Gerard Depardieu's Obelix and Asterix into 
English, he finally got round to the sequel, The Squire and His Lady. The 
research this time involved an extended tour through France with 
illustrator Michael Foreman, following the route of Edward III's army to 
the Pope's palace in Avignon.

Jones's interest in accuracy extends to details of food and drink and the 
identifiction of the first flushing toilet as much as to campaigns, 
intrigues and battles. His enthusiasm is contagious. Let him go on 
whispering in our ears. It's a story everyone will enjoy.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,402366,00.html





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