Drawing the Line

A highly unlikely subject for a play, Drawing the Line is about the civil servant sent out to India to draw the boundary between India and Pakistan just before independence. It managed the difficult task of being interesting without there be any real action. A good piece of history - of course one doesn't know exactly how much is true, but its not a subject I would have read about, so seeing it dramatized was the best I will ever get on the subject. I suppose the interesting bit as much as anything else was that sometimes you can't win. None of the parties come out too well, even Gandhi, apart maybe from our civil servant who remained with integrity, even though he got little thanks for it. But it was a good view of realpolitik. We just had to get out of India quickly as we could no longer afford it, and the simple fact was that the Muslims and the Hindus just wanted incompatible things for Pakistan and India. Nothing could please both sides.

I should also say, go to anything by Howard Brenton...