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This afternoon literary history will be made on this radio channel when two plays are broadcast. The first, Betrayal, by Harold Pinter, tells the story of an affair between Jerry and Emma, who is the wife of his best friend Robert. The second by Joan Bakewell is being performed for the first time. What is intriguing is that Pinter based his play on the eight year long affair he had with Bakewell in the 1960s. It now emerges that Joan Bakewell wrote her own play after the premiere of Betrayal, distressed by Pinter’s account of their relationship, put it in a drawer and forgot about until now. Joan Bakewell has indicated that it matters to her to put the record straight by giving her version of events. In other words, she wants what she believes is the truth to be heard. Truth was central to Harold Pinter’s acceptance speech when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He described the search for truth as what drives a writer but said that in drama there is never just one truth. This fluidity is highlighted by these two plays being broadcast side by side this afternoon. Can both be true? Whose version of events should we trust? Since the Enlightenment, the notion of truth has developed as something that can be understood entirely objectively, rather as if a dispassionate observer gazes at it down a microscope. For the Christian, truth is more something that is understood through attentiveness to the other. It is self-centeredness that cramps perspective, thwarts honesty and leads to betrayal. And yet being a follower of the truth can demand more than that. In his Nobel speech, Pinter changed tack and spoke not just about the truth being elusive but about people he admired for standing up for a truth that wasn’t fluid at all. One was a priest who served in Nicaragua, whose parish was attacked and church burnt down by the US-backed Contras, another was a group of six Jesuit priests murdered in 1989 and the third was Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated as he said Mass, all of them in San Salvador, all defenders of people against human rights violations. Pinter interpreted this sacrifice by the priests as their countering of certain politicians who were intent on manipulating power in the name of their so-called truth. A Christian interpretation would see the priests’ actions as witnessing to an absolute truth – the love of God for his people. This obligation to speak up, though, is not so much a lack of choice but a form of freedom – freedom from the compromises that others demand of you. As Christ said, the truth will set you free.