Object lesson

What are we supposed to make of those odd pictures of Osama bin Laden sitting crouched in a dingy, undecorated concrete room watching something blurred on a small TV screen? Is this really the face of jihadist evil? These were the questions behind this week’s provoking 15-minute drama in the From Fact to Fiction slot on Saturday (Radio 4).

What are we supposed to make of those odd pictures of Osama bin Laden sitting crouched in a dingy, undecorated concrete room watching something blurred on a small TV screen? Is this really the face of jihadist evil? These were the questions behind this week’s provoking 15-minute drama in the From Fact to Fiction slot on Saturday (Radio 4). Christopher William Hill’s task was to take an item of news from the past seven days and make a drama out of it. He couldn’t have been given a better week to cover. The dripfeed of pictures from the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, northern Pakistan, has been like manna to the imagination. What kind of man was Osama bin Laden? What was going on inside his head when he ‘planned’ the attack on the Twin Towers? How did he live from day to day?

It’s also been Museums Week, and so Hill cast his mini-play (directed by Mary Peate) as an ethical debate about the objects discovered in and taken from the compound in Abbottabad. Is that really a DIY power drill on the table beside him? How could that be used to portray the man who has held the West captive since 9/11? Kirsten (played by Madeleine Potter) is a curator who is planning a 9/11 exhibition and she is arguing with her colleague Patrick (Christopher Naylor) about the form, the content of their ‘show’.