The Grenfell survivors can’t copyright their tragedy

Some survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire, it was reported yesterday, have taken grave exception to some new dramatisations of the disaster.

It seems to me that historical events belong to history: and that means that they are available to news reporters to write about and dramatists to make art about

A petition urging the BBC to drop its projected series Grenfell has had more than 50,000 signatures, and there’s anger too at a play being prepared for the National Theatre by the writer Gillian Slovo. ‘Before you do this sort of thing, you should get our permission, because this is our pain, our story,’ said Maryam Adam, who escaped from the burning tower and later gave evidence to the public inquiry. David O’Connell, a leaseholder on the estate, is quoted as saying: ‘There’s no way people want to be part of this BBC series. It’s a fictionalised version of my lived experience. For us it’s repetitive and triggering.’

I risk sounding a bit of a heel in taking the opposite view here. There’s a