Last week I spoke at the launch of Draw The Line Here, the book of cartoons published by English PEN in response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
I touched on a few things that I have already noted here: the punctured optimism after the 7/7 bombings, for example. I also explicity noted the fact that, on the day after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, all but two British newspapers carried the same terrible image of the murdered policeman Ahmed Merabet, yet only those same two newspapers (The Guardian and The Independent) felt able to reproduce the relatively benign image of Mohammed on the cover of Charlie Hebdo the following week.
Amazingly, I also encountered a heckler during the speech! He protested that the incredibly crass cartoons that sometimes found their way into the pages of Charlie Hebdo were not worth defending. I unequivocally disagreed.
A recording of my speech is embedded below (and also on SoundCloud).
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Video of my speech will be available soon, along with those from broadcaster Libby Purves, Chair of the PCO Bill Stott, and Dave Brown, who draw the famous cartoon of a middle finger that was on the front page of the Independent.
In the meantime, here’s a photo of the audience.
A late night thank you to @CrowdShed for hosting @englishpen & @procartoonists for the launch of Draw The Line Here pic.twitter.com/aXLhg3BEVF
— English PEN (@englishpen) July 7, 2015
Excellent talk, Rob. I am glad to have had a chance to hear it although I had heard from a member of the audience how good you were !