What PEN Means to Me

MONICA ALI
PEN has become more of a campaigning force in the UK over the past few years in response to increasing pressures in our society which act to chill free speech. There are other organisations which represent writers' interests, but PEN is vigorous in protecting our most basic interest of all - the freedom to write. The current inquiry into libel law and the ways in which it can be used to stifle criticism is a great example of PEN's commitment to challenging the creeping censorship (and self-censorship) of public life.

Being a member of PEN also provides a great opportunity to get involved in all sorts of stimulating debates and events - my personal highlight has been listening to Tom Stoppard talking about censorship in Eastern Europe.


LISA APPIGNANESI
In these fraught times of ours, there is a silent partner in our midst. Sometimes he's in our own minds. Sometimes he reads manuscripts for book, broadcast or screen, and shakes his head. Wherever he stalks, this insidious being patrols language and the imagination for offensiveness or insult, possible libel charges, possible protest by a zillion emails or street demos. In such times, the fellowship of writers and an organisation which can represent and speak out for them and the need for free and open expression as a mainstay of a vital democracy is of invaluable use.

I first joined English PEN to work on the Writers in Prison Committee which champions the freedoms of imprisoned or persecuted writers abroad. Back in 2004, when I was Deputy President to Alastair Niven, it became clear to me that Britain's long struggled-for liberties also needed championing. Free expression was under threat from government speech legislation of various kinds, in particular the so-called 'Incitement to Religious Hatred' Bill, which would have chilled any offence of religion. Taking offence is far easier than writing, so we launched the Free Expression is No Offence campaign. English PEN helped to have that bill amended - and perhaps also put the silent censoring partner to sleep, though only momentarily. We also campaigned for and supported individual writers attacked by groups who purported to be offended by their work; worked for the repeal of the blasphemy laws and now a reform of our unjust libel laws.

Meanwhile, in line with the aspirations which attended its founding in 1921, English PEN has helped keep the dialogue between writers alive across the borders of language through its translation programme and world atlas (www.penatlas.org); and has brought writers and readers together both through its public events and readers and writers activities. The English PEN office works better than it ever has now and the support for PEN has grown. We need it.


JAKE ARNOTT
PEN to me is the most visible expression of the solidarity that writers always need to express for each other. It's a reminder of the freedom that some of us have, and how important it is to use that freedom to support others denied it. The highlight of my involvement so far has been going into Her Majesty's prisons to do readings as part of the Readers & Writers Programme. I went to Welstun, Chelmsford, Hollesley Bay and Shepton Mallet. Vibrant, engaging and inspiring sessions, rooms where cons still learning to read sat next to old lags who had spent their time becoming the most well-read people you could meet. Everywhere I found a deep understanding of the importance of self-expression. Prisoners know this better than most. The existence of PEN reminds us of those elsewhere imprisoned for exercising this basic human right.


YOUSEF AZIZI
I had heard of the International PEN, before I became a member of the Iranian Writers' Association in 1978, since it supported Iranian writers who were thrown in Shah's jails for defending unconditional freedom of speech. Naturally, I became more acquainted with this organization after the Iranian revolution in 1979 since the members of our association became easy targets to oppression and persecution as the pressure increased during the thirty years of the new rulers reign.

Being one of their victims, I am a good example of this. I was imprisoned, and along with my children, denied basic human rights in a country which ought to have been our home. When I was released from the solitary confinement near the end of June 2005, I was told, by some colleagues of mine, that the International PEN had declared its solidarity with my cause in a statement issued after their meeting in Portugal that year.

This solidarity had a positive effect on my morale. It strengthened me as I faced repeatedly the Iranian Intelligence Service's summons and finally the Revolutionary court which went on for more than three years. At last, in July 2008, I was sentenced to five years in prison for no other guilt than criticizing the violence exercised by Iranian security forces against peaceful demonstrations in April 2005 in the Arab minority region of Al-Ahwaz, southwest of Iran.
   
Since then, I have felt that there are strong ties connecting me, an Iranian Arab writer prosecuted in his home, and the International PEN. A connection that was only made richer after I personally met some of the characters in this organization, especially the English PEN. I would also like to use this occasion to recall with great appreciation what the English playwright Harold Pinter did in defending prosecuted and imprisoned Iranian writers.
   
Iranian writers and journalists have been suffering from extreme censorship of newspapers, media, and books, while what the non-Persian ethnicities - such as Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, Baluch, and Turkaman - have been made to endure such violation of their basic rights as prohibition of education in the language of their ancestors, which is in contradiction with all international laws and the Iranian constitution.
   
While non-Persian ethnicities comprise about 55% of Iran's population, they - all combined - own less than 2% of the media, publishing companies, and bookshops. The national budget, 90% of which is secured from the petroleum extracted from Al-Ahwaz region, is spent on developing and spreading the Persian language in Iran, along with Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
   
In this regard, a reform must take place to ensure the equality in linguistic and cultural representation of the Iranian ethnicities.


RACHEL BILLINGTON
Warsaw, Edinburgh, Helsinki, New York, Tokyo, London, Moscow, Dubai - PEN business has led or followed me round the world. When I first joined English PEN about 30 years ago, I thought, vaguely, it was about doing good and having fun - not necessarily in that order. Even that amount of unity seemed unlikely, writers being notoriously individual and unclubbable.

Then during my three years as President (1998-2000) I saw the wider picture in action, conferences where delegates argued as seriously as the UN but always backed by the tragedy of individual cases. Some of those, sprung from prison or the dangers in their own country, came to tell their stories and cheer us on. I'll never forget losing my passport as we crossed from Helsinki into St. Petersburg and the horrified reaction of some of these colleagues. I knew I could trot along to the British Consul and get another one but to them a passport from a safe country was a hard-fought-for and precious possession.

The English PEN Writers in Prison Committee worked hard on cases round the world but, on the home front, it all began to seem a bit privileged and cosy. So, during my term, PEN started the Readers and Writers Programme which concentrates on the UK and takes books and writers to disadvantaged children, prisoners and, lately, in a new development, refugee and migrant communities. Other new programmes have followed including the essential Writers in Translation which gives a boost to books we might miss in our little island.

Over the years, many PEN members have become good friends of mine. Some of us meet now and again for a walking day. Perhaps I should revise my view that writers are unclubbable; I'm not at all sure it's a word anyway.


LOUISE DOUGHTY
Like many novelists, I went through several years of rejection before I got published - eight years, in fact, during which I earned my living and supported my writing with a huge variety of unpleasant jobs; secretarial work, waitressing, cleaning.  As a result, I don't think I have ever lost sight of what a privilege it is to be able to write and - even more amazingly for me - to be able to earn a living at it.  I still think somebody is going to come along and tell me my whole career is down to some sort of clerical error and the publisher wants their money back.

But writers in the UK are lucky in so many ways - not only is it possible to earn a living by writing here, but nobody puts you in prison or tortures you because of it.  The worst we can face is another rejection letter, or an unfavourable review in a newspaper.  It's often easy to lose perspective when you get those, and that's why it's so important to belong to an organisation like PEN, which campaigns so brilliantly for writers' freedoms all over the world.  The PEN newsletter and the events they organise are a great way of keeping in touch with your peers but also brilliant for keeping your feet on the ground - thousands of other writers face imprisonment or worse simply for doing what we all do.  Membership of PEN is a way of putting a little back into the system and supporting other writers who would love to have the freedom and economic opportunities that we all take for granted and I'm proud to give it my full support.


MARGARET DRABBLE
I joined PEN when I was a very young writer, because the living writers I respected (including Francis King and Angus Wilson) belonged to it and encouraged me to join. It stood against censorship, and pre-dated Amnesty, of which I also became a member. I remember, in early days, some convivial and chaotic social evenings, paying tribute to members who had died - evenings for Olivia Manning and J. B. Priestley in particular. Priestley's memorial devolved into a dispute about whether he had preferred plain or milk chocolate, a discussion he would have enjoyed. I know he preferred milk, because he told me so, but he seems to have said otherwise to others. Writers cannot be trusted.

PEN's more serious concerns have become more highly organised over the years. The outcome of the Saro-Wiwa affair was tragic, but it was some comfort to be able to stand in the street with PEN and make a memorable public protest. The Rushdie affair introduced yet more causes for concern. As one barrier (the Iron Curtain) falls, another, in the name of religion, is raised. I fear today the insidious power of self-censorship, and our well-meant but potentially disastrous timidity about accusations of cultural appropriation. PEN has recently been in the forefront of legal battles to protect freedom of speech and the rights of the imagination. It is a practical, campaigning, and effective body, with years of experience in international negotiation. We as writers are lucky that its staff and so many dedicated members are willing and able to give their time to it. They keep their eye on the ball, wherever it rolls. They work for all of us.


JULIAN EVANS
I spend my time writing caught between the sad knowledge that there's nothing else I can do and that whatever I've written that day has the slenderest claim to anyone's attention. In a culture constantly pointing out to me that there are a million more profitable and laudable ways to live my life, and that journalism and reality TV are far more valuable than what I do, it seems obvious that people like me need to stick together.

I was hounded into PEN by a friend, and slowly realised how much it satisfies that need for community. At the same time it concentrates our resources as writers: PEN was the first venue to show me that writers together can make a difference, whether in countering wrong-headed legislation such as the proposed law on incitement to religious hatred (a campaign I had the pleasure of taking part in kicking off), or in assembling a committee and funds to help promote translated fiction.

PEN has changed. When I joined it was sometimes underfunded and strife-torn, to borrow a journalist's cliché. Today it's hardier and less indigent. It is still as open, though, and still just as involving. And in the current shrinking of our freedoms and public space, we members have a new role - not only to stick together, but to fight back by making sure that writers' voices - our splendid voices raised together - are always in the forefront.


MORIS FARHI
When, in the early 1950s, in my native Turkey, I decided on a literary career, I started orbiting published authors in the expectation that their gifts would osmose into me. In those days Turkish writers usually congregated in taverns where instead of discussing the vagaries of their metier, they either praised or insulted each other in verse or prose. But always gallant towards 'crazy' aspirants, they welcomed me; to find inspiration youths needed to be suckled by the Muse of alcohol, they said.

Given that ambience, during my early years in England, I held the misconception that PEN was a 'Club', therefore, an organisation typically and quaintly British where I would be an outsider.

Then in early 1970s, the late Harold Harris, the doyen of British publishers, invited me to defend freedom of expression by joining English PEN. At the time, Harris had undertaken the publication of Mein Kampf, despite virulent criticism from many quarters, with the conviction that Hitler's rants must be made available to the world lest it forgets that human nature has a vein which pursues evil.

His fervour touched me to the core. During my formative years, Nâzım Hikmet, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century - and my cultural god - had languished in jail for over a decade for his socialist views; I had distributed his banned poems; I had felt desolate when, hounded by the Turkish government, he had had to flee to the USSR; and, I had wept inconsolably, when he had died there, pining for his beloved country like most exiled writers. Thus through Harris' invitation I finally found both my country and my flag: the patria of world literature and the Writers in Prison Committee.

PEN Centres everywhere know that if the Word dies, humanity, too, will die. Whilst dictators, racists, nationalists, war-lovers, false prophets and worshippers of Mammon abuse, scourge, maim and seek to assassinate the Word, PEN Centres, particularly their Writers in Prison Committees, stand as its saviours. They confirm that mankind's destiny is not to pursue death and perpetual destruction, but to pursue life and perpetual creation. Within that confirmation lies the hope that, one day, the Writers in Prison Committees will become obsolete, that nowhere at any time, a single writer will be threatened, imprisoned or killed for having dared express his or her views.


JAMES FLINT
As a writer, it's easy to spin free of the world. You sit in your room, picking away at your text, trying not to admit to yourself the scale of the clearly irrational gamble you're taking that at the end of the process enough people will want to read it to have made the effort worthwhile.

Other people get up every day and leave the house to go to work or tend to the needs of others. But there you sit, on your own, wondering sometimes if maybe, just maybe, you've gone crazy.

This kind of madness could be described as an intellectual extreme sport. Scary, yes, but in a thrilling way. And, crucially, largely self-determined.

While you're experiencing it, it's easy to forget the unbelievable luxury of the life that you're living. It's easy to forget, as you worry about character, plot, deadlines, editors, agents, sales, reviews, promotion, that there are many many writers in the world who have prison, and torture, and exile to worry about for doing what you're doing: sitting in a room, thinking your thoughts, and committing them to paper in the hope that one day you'll get to share them with the world.

These people have genuine cause to wonder if they are going crazy. Theirs is a very real and terrifying ordeal that no one undergoes by choice, and which can destroy not just their own lives but the lives of their families and colleagues besides.

The chance to help let writers experiencing this second kind of madness know that their struggle is not going unregarded, and that their efforts will not ultimately be in vain, is what PEN offered me, a writer experiencing the other, rather more self-indulgent, kind.

How could I not sign up and get involved, in however small a way?


MICHAEL FRAYN
Writers function by having individual voices, which tends to bring them into conflict with the conformity required by systems of organised authority and belief. By the same token it makes it difficult for them to counter-organise in their own defence. I am a member of PEN because it offers just that - a chance to counter-organise, to band together writers in more favourable circumstances (who are also necessarily individuals by profession) so that they can offer some effective support for their persecuted colleagues.


VICTORIA GLENDINNING
I love and respect English PEN, and cannot imagine not being part of it. I've been a member for thirty years - though I find this hard to believe - and I felt very honoured to be admitted. That was in the days when you had to have a proposer and a seconder, and PEN met on the premises of an artists' club in Chelsea. Josephine Pullein-Thompson was the presiding deity, and the dinners, after a lecture, were cooked by the committee and served in a minuscule dining-room which made intimacy instant. It was more like a club then, as it still is in some countries.

Over the past three decades English PEN, like most successful voluntary organisations, has transformed itself in the interests of furthering its mission and of survival. This was not achieved without pain, and much grinding of emotional gears, which was ongoing during my presidency, when we first took on paid staff. It is in a stable phase now, which is just as well considering the new freedom of expression issues with which we have to engage worldwide as well as in our own country.

The spirit of PEN which I most appreciate is its generous spread - from taking books and writers into places where they do not usually go, to the public events when we host distinguished writers from overseas, and to our closeness to International PEN and the international conferences, which are always a life-changing experience. Central to everything, as it always has been from PEN's earliest days, is our work for Writers in Prison. The dedication of the volunteer committee members in all PEN's programmes is fantastic. Of course we can do better. For a start, there should be more of us. All responsible writers should be members of PEN.


DAVID HARE
PEN is the one trade organisation in the world whose members' interests are invariably coincident with the common good. What is good for us is good for everyone. Freedom of speech is both a narrow trade union interest - writers can't operate without it - and at the same time the sine qua non of democracy. It makes for an interesting mix.


RONALD HARWOOD
I was first drawn to the affairs of PEN because of its fight for freedom of expression. Before I joined, my chief interest was the oppression of writers in the Soviet Union. I was also involved in the 'refusenik' movement that fought to get Jewish writers out of Russia to live under the democratic government of Israel where freedom of expression is not only allowed but also encouraged. Only later did I become aware that censorship was widespread, especially in Turkey, China and a great many other places.

Antonia Fraser was my conduit into PEN in 1985. She was then Chairman of the Writers in Prison committee and later became President of English PEN. I succeeded her in both roles, taking over the Presidency in 1989 at the height of the Salman Rushdie affair. Four years later, I was elected International President, a post I held until 1997.

Self-evidently, PEN was a major part of my life for twelve years. The organisation's unique endeavours to maintain the highest standards in literature and its battle for the freedom of writers proved irresistible to me. We fought for Rushdie, Vaclav Havel and, indeed, for all oppressed writers. Tragically, the civil war in former Yugoslavia was a dominant event. I made several journeys to that region and had, for the first time, to confront writers caught between their nationalist loyalties and their integrity as members of PEN.

I continue to take an interest in the affairs of PEN because little has changed except the geography. Totalitarian governments and extremists will always seek to suppress criticism, always violently. PEN is the only collective defence for those who seek to write the truth.


ALI REZA JABARI
I have been an honorary member of English PEN since the year 2004 when I was passing my period of imprisonment in Rajaiishhr prison in Karaj in the southwest of Tehran.

The reason why I was sent there as a prisoner of conscience was my contribution to the Iranian Farsi websites published in Europe and North America with articles in which I had challenged the self-contradictory essence of the phrase 'religious democracy', used by the Iranian statesmen and theorized by state journalists.

In the middle of my imprisonment period I received a letter from a dear English PEN fellow-writer, named Christine O'Brien, showing great sorrow for my difficult conditions there; she continued her correspondence with me until I was informed that I had been accepted in English PEN.

That was a great mental support for me to have such friendly contacts with so many fellow-writers in so far a region of the world as North-West Europe. That made me so willing to accept the English PEN's invitation as an honorary member. I knew that there are always freedom lovers all over the world, particularly amongst those with the same ideals as fellow writers.

One of my best fellow-writers and friends in 4-5 years in PEN has been and is Val Warner, whom I thank whole-heartedly for her great steady efforts to make me aware of the opportunities for foreign honorary members of English PEN. She and another kind and pro-active English PEN staffer, Lucy Popescu, made contact with the world famous fiction-writer, Isabel Allende, whose Stories of Eva Luna I had translated into Farsi, regarding my judiciary case and Lucy persuaded Isabel to make contact with the then President of Iran, Mohammad Khatami in this respect, asking for my immediate release.

My release from prison coincided with Isabel Allende's correspondence with president Khatami, nearly at the end of my two-year imprisonment and whatever the results might be, the participants' kind and sincere efforts in this respect was of particular value to me, being a great favour to me which I might never forget.

Lucy Popescu also published a short biography of me on the English PEN website, I think in 2006, and Val Warner helped me publish my article regarding punishment by executions in Iran today together with another pro-active member of English PEN, Cat Lucas.

During all the years that I have been an honorary member of English PEN, many fellow-writers favoured me with sending season's cards and did not leave me alone; and they were and have been steady and serious in that; but as PEN is an established world association of writers I hope it has great potential to increase its worldwide actions of solidarity and cooperative opportunities in future.

With very best wishes for unity and solidarity of English and International PEN members in preserving and promoting essential human freedoms, particularly freedom of writing and speech all over the world.


FRANCIS KING
For more than half a century I was constantly active in the work of PEN, eventually becoming President of the English Centre and then International President. But though I am still totally committed to the aims of the organisation and still privately do whatever I can to further them, as far as the English Centre is concerned I have for some time now taken not merely a back seat but, in effect, no seat at all.

My reason for this is no disagreement, grudge or grievance but simply that I did not wish to become PEN's Edward Heath, grumpy and cantankerous and constantly proffering unwanted advice. There was certainly a period when I felt that PEN was lurching off the rails, with rivalries and rifts, and was tempted to intervene. But thanks to Alistair Niven's firm but tactful diplomacy, Jonathan Heawood's scrupulous efficiency and Lisa Appignanesi's presentational brilliance those days are now mercifully past.

PEN has always had two declared aims - to encourage the discussion and diffusion of literature and to fight for human rights. But I think that, at its inception, it also had a third, undeclared aim, so that, significantly, its founders opted to call the nascent organisation not the PEN Society but the PEN Club. In doing this, they were surely implying that this was an organisation dedicated not merely to ideas and ideals but also to comradeship among a loyal band of colleagues. Am I deluding myself in thinking that in those now far off days our redoubtable Josephine Pullein-Thompson created an extraordinary atmosphere of personal warmth?

PEN was far more amateur then, received far less publicity and was far less successful at raising funds, as it limped from one financial crisis to another. But… Well, having renounced the role of PEN's Edward Heath, I must leave it at that. I can only say, with continuing admiration for all PEN's burgeoning achievements - Floreat Stilus!
 

MARINA LEWYCKA
Being a member of PEN makes me feel a part of a world wide community of writers. I know that I'm a privileged member of that community, having relative freedom to say and write what I like.

I'm not a very brave person, and I'm not sure whether, if I found myself facing persecution, I would have the courage to write about things that would get me into trouble, so I have a huge respect for those writers who are willing to take risks, to put the authorities on the spot, and to pursue stories that vested interests would prefer to keep hidden.

However, one thing I know is that persecutors and bullies love secrecy. They love to think that their power shields them, and that no one knows or cares about the lone brave or foolhardy voices that cry out to the world when something is wrong. PEN, almost uniquely, listens out for those voices. It can't spring someone from prison, but it reminds the powerful that the world is watching. And it reminds the imprisoned or persecuted writer, in their hour of despair, that they're not on their own. Through PEN, I can listen to those voices too, and make it a little harder for them to be silenced.


TOBY LITT
One of the greatest difficulties of constantly-insisted-upon globalisation is that it is very easy to lose all sense of personal agency. This goes along with a feeling of great control over matters of total inconsequence (coffee varieties, screensavers). What PEN gives me is, almost uniquely, a sense of connection with people whose circumstances make mine, by contrast, look decadent. I know that I share with these people the one central fact of our lives - that we have found our vocation in writing. It is an accident of birth that I live somewhere I can write and publish with very little overt censorship. That this is a privilege is something PEN often reminds me of - by asking me to join in an email campaign, to help with a fundraising event or to sit on a committee. And by joining in, and then by seeing that PEN's activities do make a difference, I am able to feel that something can be done, that the right to freedom of expression can be defended.


LINDSAY MACKIE
I came to English PEN through the late and much missed Siobhan Dowd who asked me to be on her Readers and Writers Committee. What I loved about PEN's work then, and now, was the way in which people connected to the book world - writers in particular - got together so willingly and generously and - mostly - so optimistically, to safeguard the freedom to write and therefore the freedom of all of us to read and think. This aim is never in doubt at English PEN and though the campaigns are difficult and often very onerous in execution, they have a glorious simplicity of purpose. And Readers and Writers, which I now chair, has the same certainty of purpose - to underscore the promotion of literature and literacy in underserved communities and always to campaign for the right to write and read what you want.

And did I mention the fun that is a big part of PEN life…..?


CHIP MARTIN
Over the years PEN has meant to me mainly people. The energies and intelligence of Jonathan Heawood; the brightness of Sarah Hesketh; Debbie Moggach's tireless commitment and inventiveness; the steady hand of Alastair Niven; the affectionate nature of Moris Farhi; the passions of Joan Smith; the urbanity of Simon Burt; the melody of Jan Dalley's smile. Even the most combative AGMs have been colourful, stimulating. From most events one goes away with a new thought. Authors pigeon-holed as one thing have become another - Will Self after his tender analysis of Sebald. Then there is the joy of participation: serving on the management committee was never irksome; joining in readings for persecuted writers was sobering, touching, inspiring, especially under the deft guidance of Victoria Glendinning. PEN is all the metaphors have suggested it to be: a network, a home, a beating heart. May it remain thus.


STEPHANIE MERRITT
For me, PEN is a way of feeling part of a community of writers that reaches beyond my own background and experience. The act of writing is at once intimate and desperately solitary, so the sense of being connected to a body that brings us together is vital and it was this sense of solidarity, with like-minded writers both in Britain and around the world, which first prompted me to join. Perhaps most importantly, though, PEN's international work among imprisoned and censored writers is a constant reminder to me of how fortunate we are as writers in Britain, and a useful corrective whenever I find myself moaning about the state of publishing/bookselling/advances. Our liberty to explore, question and challenge is a luxury many writers only dream of, though PEN's campaigns for freedom of expression also serve to remind us that we must never become complacent about those freedoms.

The highlight of my experience with PEN so far was being involved in bringing the Belarus Free Theatre to perform their stark, beautiful drama Being Harold Pinter at the Soho Theatre in 2008. To meet these remarkably determined and courageous artists and hear their stories face to face was not only extraordinary and humbling, but a practical example of how PEN could work in the future to bring writers from different cultures together.  


DEBORAH MOGGACH
The work of PEN has been central to my life as a writer. It's always struck me as strange that a writer wouldn't join PEN, as the swiftest glance around the world shows us how essential it is. We might feel uneasy about the erosion of freedoms in this country but in so many places a writer cannot speak out at all, for fear that their voice will be silenced. Almost more insidious is the self-censorship this creates in a person's imagination. For those who are courageous enough to speak out, and be thrown into prison for their efforts, PEN's support is truly life-saving. I've been involved with English PEN for twenty-five years and seen it weather all sorts of challenges since those early days at Dilke Street where we talked and argued and ate sausage rolls amongst the dusty paintings of the Sketch Club; it's re-invented itself as a hugely efficient and professional organisation. And it's needed more than ever.

And did I mention that it's also a lot of fun?


TREVOR MOSTYN
I was invited to join English PEN in 1976 by John Paxton, the Editor of the Statesman's Yearbook, when I was Middle East manager of Macmillan Publishers. English PEN was then essentially a cosy, literary club in Dilke Street, Chelsea. When English PEN's Writers in Prison Committee asked me to go to Cairo in 2003 to attend the two trials of the political activist Sa'd ad-Din Ibrahim for challenging President Mubarak, I was impressed by how pro-active it had become but horrified by the deterioration of human rights in Egypt. I knew Cairo intimately but failed to reach Egypt's closed political prisons during that week. I was convinced that the interior ministry, the prosecutor's office and the prisons should be my goal rather than merely the court of cassation, the newspapers, the embassies and the human rights groups. It was obvious how targeted missions needed to be to achieve PEN's practical goals.

When Carole Seymour-Jones and I visited Belarus in 2004 we made our goals the release of Professor Bandazhevsky from incarceration near Minsk and meetings with recently released journalists from the now banned Pahomia newspaper in Grodny. We even watched their computers being driven away by the KGB. Our mission involved a three-day tour of the deserted villages in the Chernobyl exclusion zone and constant visits to Bandazhevsky's wife in a monastery. Partly thanks to our mission, Bandazhevsky was later released but by then he had contracted cancer from his ten-year work in Gomel studying teenagers infected with Cesium-32 radiation. English PEN helped to publish two of his books.

When I attended the International PEN Congress in Bogotá in September 2008 I realised how valuable English PEN's models might be to PEN centres in developing countries. I am now helping to support, among other writers, Giles Ungpakorn, a brilliant Thai political writer who, until he fled to Oxford, was facing a possible 15 years in prison for the crime of Lese Majesté. Campaigning for writers and giving them honorary membership of English PEN will inevitably make regimes think twice about tormenting them.
 

JOSEPHINE PULLEIN-THOMPSON
I always knew of PEN's existence. My mother, Joanna Cannan, and her cousin, Gilbert Cannan, had joined in the 1920's and from the accounts given to a five-year-old, it sounded quite a lively organisation.

At that time the main aim of PEN was to bring the writers of the world together after the divisions and slaughter of World War I. The Charter gradually evolved, setting forth PEN's precepts, and English PEN's constitution ruled that equal numbers of men and women were to be elected to its Executive Committee.

It was the rise of Fascism and the Nazis which set PEN on the path of protest; the German burning of the books, the exile of Thomas Mann and many other writers. And our first writers in prison, two in Italy and Arthur Koestler, sentenced to death in Spain.

I joined in 1963. I was already a member of The Society of Authors and The Crimewriters' Association and I think it was the international aspect of PEN which attracted me and when I attended the Congress in New York in 1966 - Arthur Miller was International President - I was hooked.

In 1974 I was elected to the English Executive Committee and I decided to attend the Israeli Congress. Just before we set off Paul Tabori, one of our two official delegates, died and I found myself appointed in his stead.

Paul was a great loss, an Hungarian exile, the International Writers in Prison Committee was his brain child. The death of David Carver, the International Secretary and. by tradition, also General Secretary of English PEN, which followed, left both organisations in some confusion. However, it was agreed that it was time this tradition ended and in 1976 at the London Congress Peter Elstob was elected to the International post and later that year I was elected as the General Secretary of English PEN. (We were all gen secs in those days, part-time and unpaid; New York was the first centre to have a Director.)

I was re-elected on a yearly basis for the next seventeen years. PEN changed a good deal during that time. All our meetings, three a month, except in August and September, were held in Dilke Steet, Chelsea. It was not an elegant setting, though it had the advantage of a small bar which also served sausages, and no one sponsored our wine.

We were always desperately short of cash and what we raised was mostly given to the International Writers in Prison Committee which in those days relied on gifts from centres.

Gradually we all began to take more interest in prisoners. We made three of them honorary members and achieved an encouraging success when one, Said Zahari, was released in Singapore. Realising that we must do more, we formed our own Writers in Prison Committee with Antonia Fraser in the chair and then, abandoning the previous PEN practice of acting behind the scenes, we began to demonstrate. If we could guarantee the press that our well-known writers would be there they gave us good coverage and publicity sometimes helped.

My great moments were many: the pleasure of seeing several hundred spruced up PEN members taking their seats on Writers Day. The letter from Said Zahari, written in green ink, that told me he was free. The news that the Polish writers, all interned for supporting solidarity and lying rather miserably on their bunks, had heard Harold Pinter on the World Service speaking from our demo outside their London embassy and had burst into a spontaneous cheer. The extraordinary rush of adrenalin that had filled our office as we released the World Statement, hastily composed in London, in response to the Fatwa passed on Salman Rushdie. It had been tidied up by Francis King and was now being read to PEN centres worldwide; to the French speakers by Moris Farhi and the English speakers by me, while Tom Aiken dealt with an avid Press. Then, translated into the appropriate language, signed by as many writers as could be contacted, it appeared all over the world; most newspapers delighted to print it, full page and free!

What did I get out of PEN? Well, apart from the comradeship, the warm feeling of being part of the English PEN family, the travel and the stimulation of meeting writers from other countries, it was the knowledge that I was working for an organisation that really did make a difference and was of far greater importance then oneself.

The future? PEN will always be needed, but the way it is needed will change and I hope that there will be future generations of members enjoying each other's company and working out how best to cherish the freedoms which the world's rulers so often wish to destroy.


FERNANDO REBELO
PEN is a place for thinking people freedom's advocacy.
 

LYNNE REID BANKS
One of my most memorable experiences came to me through PEN, when I was invited by the late, and much missed and honoured, Siobhan Dowd to take part in the Readers & Writers project.

Siobhan arranged everything, and to my regret I don't remember the names of the two prisons I went to, but in one of them I was told by one of 'my' inmates that Rosemary West was sequestered there ('And they'd better not let her come anywhere near us!'). I would meet Siobhan at Waterloo Station and she would escort me on the onward journey to wherever we were to go. The plan was this: a book, chosen by PEN, had previously been distributed to any prisoners who had opted for a session with an author; they were given several weeks to read it, and then the author would be introduced to the group and there would be a discussion.

The book chosen in my case was, perhaps inevitably, The L-Shaped Room. Not all the women who came had actually read it, but several of them had. I felt that for the rest, the session was opted-for perhaps out of curiosity. But the women - all young, many 'in' for drug-related offences - all enjoyed a break from routine and took at least a cursory interest when they understood what the book was about. Many of them had experience of unmarried motherhood, and most of them had children. Being separated from them was evidently their heaviest punishment.

On the first occasion I made a booboob from the off, when I said the book was about a life-changing experience for my heroine, and asked if any of them could think of such an incident in their own lives. There was a short silence and then one remarked, 'Yes. It's called going to jail.' But at least the laughter broke the ice.

The most involved and intelligent woman - who had thoroughly read the book and had lots of questions - later took me to the art room to show me her paintings. I sort of forgot she was a felon. When I was leaving, I asked the warder (who presided over the session) about her. 'Nine years for GBH,' she said tersely. 'She shouldn't have told you that,' Siobhan told me on the train.

Later, Siobhan sent me some very touching and appreciative letters written to me by several of the women. I felt rather uncomfortable for having accepted pay from PEN to do these visits. No writer would not have found such an experience rewarding in itself.


ROS SCHWARTZ
I am a translator from French and a relative newcomer to PEN, having been invited to join the newly launched Writers in Translation Programme by previous director Susie Nicklin. And I'm glad I accepted. It has been a real privilege to be involved in this activity, now in its fifth year. The programme has been instrumental in supporting and raising the profile of translated works which might otherwise have found it hard to break through. It was rewarding to see five PEN-supported titles on this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize long list and to note that the PEN Atlas of World Literature was recently nominated as Guardian website of the week. The 'PEN recommends' label is now much sought after by publishers - a measure of the programme's success.

For me, PEN is a community of writers, translators, publishers - busy people who give unstintingly of their time, energy and expertise, supported by an exceptionally able and efficient staff under the confident leadership of Jonathan Heawood. It is both humbling and inspirational to work with such committed and generous people. PEN has a tremendous networking power and is much, much more than the sum of its parts.

At the time I became a member, PEN was emerging from a difficult period, but what I now see is a cohesive, forward-looking organisation ready to tackle complex issues such as libel tourism here in the UK while continuing to defend writers who are silenced or imprisoned anywhere in the world.


RIVERS SCOTT
I remember attending meetings of PEN when its home was still in Glebe Place, but did not become a member until 1978, by which time it had moved to Dilke Street. There, besides the important issues always at its heart, my overriding impression of PEN meetings was that of friendliness, intimacy, and indeed, what its name implies, real clubbability. Wonderful Josephine Pullein-Thompson was at the heart of all this. She kept us in order with firmness combined with good humour and called on an apparently inexhaustible supply of delightful young nieces to supply us with our food. Our talks were very much writing based. As then chairman of the Programme Committee I remember with particular pride a symposium we organised on Dame Rebecca West, who had recently died and who had latterly been, together with Nigel Dennis, star of the Sunday Telegraph book review pages. The questions at the end of these talks were sometimes idiosyncratic. In particular John Braine, a frequent and argumentative attender, would always begin his with the words 'John Braine, Room at the Top' - as though we didn't all know. There was also, on one occasion, some underwear-clad splashing about in the Thames near Oxford ('Come on in, the water's fine!', from the ladies). But let that pass. Now times, as well as place, have changed, and a new approach is called for. But the past is a pleasant place to dwell in, for all that.


MIRANDA SEYMOUR
I've been connected with PEN for twenty years, long enough to see that PEN's role in defending the freedom of speech, immensely powerful during the precedent-breaking case of the Rushdie Fatwa, remains crucial. PEN's view - that 'bad' views should be heard, not gladly, but heard - stands against the deeply shocking idea that any voice that expresses dissident views, even in fiction, should be silenced. Between the pressure from the radical left (holding that there is a politically incorrect language that needs to be suppressed) and the extreme right (that censorship is the solution to any view that threatens the status quo), PEN occupies the vital middle ground. PEN stands for toleration, justice, and freedom. The need for PEN's presence to be felt in the world has never mattered more.


GILLIAN SLOVO
PEN gives me a sense of belonging to a community of writers. And it's a community not only in this country but one that crosses national borders. This is what first drew me to PEN - this sense of collectivity that recognises that an injury to a writer many thousands of miles away also impacts on us and effects the way we are as writers.  In my time with PEN I have been witness to its growing public profile, not only through its staunch work to help and publicise the plight of imprisoned writers, or its wide ranging set of public meetings, but also through its successful campaigns against the government's attempts to outlaw incitement to religious hatred as well as its current campaign to reform the libel laws. PEN has managed to keep the sense of being a writers' club it always had while at the same time expanding to cope with the demands of the modern world.  In a time when fear of terrorism has given states free reign to promulgate increasingly draconian laws, an organisation like PEN that campaigns so thoughtfully against the restriction of free speech plays a vital part in the safeguarding of human rights.


ALI SMITH
PEN means freedom of speech. There's nothing in the world that means more. As civil liberties erode, both globally and locally, PEN means more than ever.


TOM STOPPARD
I was never much of a joiner, especially in the case (which means most cases) of organisations one joins for one's own benefit. This was more to do with laziness than self-reliance. But PEN is different. PEN exists to defend and benefit writers less lucky than oneself. I joined because writers everywhere (and readers, too, I believe) are family.


OLIVIA TEMPLE
PEN is something which represents to me the world of letters for which it stands… the world of poets, playwrights, editors, essayists, and novelists as well as journalists with press passes and satirists and song-writers. A place where there is help, help with plagiarism, help with oppression, help with translations, help with enforced solitude, a safety net, a haven, a sympathetic group of people, civilized discussion, challenging evenings, a shared endeavour and aim. A place for truth, brotherhood, sisterhood, fellowship, empathy, sympathy, encouragement and advice. A non-existent but real place shared in the mind which crosses all languages, boundaries, borders and locked doors. A place that springs from the brow of all those who live and strive for the truth, their tool the pen, the printing press, the paper, whether a scrap or a fine notebook. A place where freedom of speech is the only elixir and where there are fine people, near and far who will work for that freedom to the ends of the earth.


ADAM THIRLWELL
When thinking about PEN, and its necessary defence of free speech, I think haphazardly of three stories from the recent history of Europe.

First, I remember Václav Havel, who in 1984 wrote that 'with respect to the relation of Western Europe to the totalitarian systems' the greatest error would be not to see that these totalitarian systems were 'a convex mirror of all modern civilisation.' No state was free from censorship, or misused power. Not even, for instance, ours. Havel wrote this in a speech to celebrate his honorary doctorate from the University of Toulouse. Since he was unable to leave Czechoslovakia, the speech was read by Tom Stoppard. And it was Stoppard - who as a young child emigrated from a differently censored, Nazi-censored version of that country - who in a recent text persuasively recast the ideal of free speech as a rule, not a right: a voluntary mark of one's personal civilisation. 'The rules are ours to make, and modify for different situations.' And this makes me remember an anecdote I treasure about the Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal, who lived in the forest, in retreat from the communist regime. One day he saw Havel and other founders of Charter 77 coming up the path, bearing the petition in their hand. He fled into the woods for six hours. Finally, worried that he should feed his cats, he came back. They were still there, impassive, immoveable, on the doorstep.

But Hrabal still didn't sign.

And I love all the characters in this story - the defenders of free speech, and the escaping novelist. That is what PEN represents to me: the fight for the most civilised, most libertarian rules possible, so that every citizen possesses as much freedom of speech as possible - including the final freedom to say nothing, and disappear.


CLAIRE TOMALIN
Two sentences about PEN: it is a good organisation because every now and then it makes a difference to the real world and helps to improve the life of a writer who is being persecuted, threatened or imprisoned. This is always a slow, difficult, uncertain process, requiring a great deal of organisation: it takes persistence, letters of protest, more letters, more persistence. Mostly it fails, the world being what it is, but the sheer effort and seriousness of the work that is done counts for a great deal. So I nominate the Writers in Prison section of PEN as the part of PEN I most value.


GILES JI UNGPAKORN
In January 2009, I discovered that I was charged with lese majesté, and faced 15 years in prison, for writing an academic book criticising the 2006 military coup in Thailand. I found out that my university (Chulalongkorn University), which had previously banned my book from their bookshop, were the people who actually handed a copy to the Thai police. The entire university administration supported the coup and my prosecution and only a handful of Thai academics spoke up for me and for academic freedom. The entire NGO movement in Thailand remained silent and even my own brother (an ex-Senator) told me that if I waged a high profile campaign to defend myself then 'there was nothing anyone could do to help me'. The implication was that I should shut up and say sorry and then the Palace might grant me a pardon in the distant future.

In my personal hour of darkness it was English PEN who rose to the challenge and provided me with serious support. None of the writers in PEN had ever known me before. Many might not share my beliefs. But the issue for PEN was simple: freedom of speech. Without this kind of international support, and without the warm support I received from the 'Redshirt' pro-democracy movement in Thailand, academics like me would lose heart and remain silent and fearful in the face of oppression, injustice and censorship.

Recently I was shocked to hear the vice chancellor of Oxford and the President of St John's College praise the 'democratic credentials' of the Thai Prime Minister. No doubt uppermost in their minds was the income earned from Thai government scholars at Oxford. So academic freedom cannot be taken for granted anywhere.

So what I say to PEN is... Thank you, please keep up the excellent work that you do. Thailand is not yet a free society and there will be others who need your support.


MARINA WARNER
I first started attending PEN events when we met in the raffish clubhouse of the Sketch Club, and Sybille Bedford would grumble at the top of her voice during dinner about the food and (often) the speaker. It was in Chelsea, but the atmosphere recalled novels written by the first wave of West Indies writers who encountered the dank shabbiness of London: coin-fed gas meters, warm g & t, crumbling jackets, and barely disguised rivalrous strife between authors. But on one occasion, Maria Vargas Llosa gave a terrific talk, 'My Son, the Rastafarian' - later it became a celebrated piece. Sybille B. still wasn't impressed.

Since then PEN has rightly become a very different, much more ambitious and far more active and effective body, and the issues have moved beyond the Lord Chamberlain's office (though the correspondence of Pinter, Osborne, Tynan in defence of plays recently exhibited at the BL was riveting), to a large, worldwide arena, where the British government has supported the destruction of freedoms, including free speech, and continues to do so.

However, rather than comment on the political dimension of this threat, I will mention another, rather more elusive but very insidious danger in the current climate: it is becoming a very tough struggle for writers, scholars, and researchers to survive if we refuse to conform to strictly regimented rulings laid down by economic interests. These are drawn up by managers and accountants who care little for literature, thought, the arts, or the emancipation of the mind.


VAL WARNER
I found a PEN anthology in the public library as a schoolgirl, and joined years later after getting to know Francis King. I got involved with Writers in Prison after noticing a tiny note about a demo in the then English PEN mag - pre-email's enhanced communications! Weekly demos were held for Faraj Sarkouhi 1997-8 outside Iranian embassies in Europe including London's. Rushing to a meeting in the old PEN Dilke Street premises, I remember like yesterday David Holman, then WiPC Chair, declaring on the door-step Sarkouhi had been released. Ali Reza Jabari, another Iranian, was in 2004 released early - though again maybe coincidentally and as part of an international campaign - when helped by the New York PEN office and Lucy Popescu then in the English office, I'd asked Isabel Allende, whom he'd translated, to protest. The moment sticking in my mind is Allende's assistant's final nocturnal (British time) email saying the letter I'd written for Allende had been signed. These prisoner reminiscences are, sadly, untypically positive -- making the current Cuba campaign, for instance, the more vital.