2 October. I suppose Allelujah!, while not unambiguous, is the closest I’ve ever got to a political play. Some of this is fortuitous. I have always thought that there is an element of prophecy in plays: write it and it happens. With this play it’s been almost embarrassing. Lest I be thought to be trailing behind the facts I should say that Valentine’s trouble over his visa was written months before the Windrush business and indeed the various scandals in NHS hospitals. I had originally intended Valentine to be an older doctor, brought out of retirement by the hospital because of a shortage of staff. In which case to refuse him a visa would have seemed even more shocking, though no more so than the treatment meted out to the long-established immigrants who were so callously singled out.
Source: London Review of Books