Short cuts

‘Censorship,’ shrieked Hanif Kureishi after discovering that his short story, ‘Weddings and Beheadings’, was not going to be read on Radio Four as part of the National Short Story Competition (organised with various organisations including Prospect magazine, Booktrust and the Scottish Book Trust to promote the skill involved in writing short stories). The five shortlisted stories were all meant to be aired last week on Radio Four, but Kureishi’s was withdrawn at the last moment on the orders of the Controller, Mark Damazer. Damazer stated firmly that the BBC was ‘not censoring’ the story, just ‘postponing transmission’. His reason: ‘because of stories that have been circulating about Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent, who was abducted in Gaza.’

Fair enough, you might think. The story is set in Iraq and tells of a film-maker who is forced at gunpoint to film the beheading of terrorists’ victims. It’s violent, it’s visceral, it’s shocking — and, at just 1,000 words (a little bit longer than this column), very short.