Memories of '68

I HAVE TO SAY, Les Misérables certainly made an impact on me; all week I've been humming tunes from the show and turning the story over in my mind.

I'm there again, in the theatre, reliving the fight on the barricades along with the students, and so real is it, I'm almost ducking the bullets and feeling both grief and rage at the sight of my comrades falling.

I was in Paris in 1968, an accidental tourist in the aftermath of the student uprising; I was a student then myself, and I couldn't help but be swept up in some of their idealism and passion.

In the university cafeteria, in cafés and in pokey little bedsits, drinking cheap wine out of bottles and in the fug of smoke from foul-smelling, but intoxicating, Gauloise cigarettes, we discussed - everything. Politics, art, sex - everything was up for debate.

It was a cleaner, fairer, better world we were aspiring too - naively, perhaps, but with faith and hope in our hearts.

And I too had my brushes with the authorities - if you were young, you were hassled by the cops, les flics, almost at every turn.

So you can understand how I can identify with the students on the barricades in Les Miz - and how that whole story has brought back memories of '68.

And I'm left wondering, where do I stand now?

Certainly, I'm not a rebel - I was never comfortable in that role, even back then; I was happy to debate and argue, but I'm afraid it was always the blood of others that was shed in the demonstations.

Maybe it was lack of conviction on my part. Maybe simple cowardice. I don't know.

I console myself, now, with something Dr Martin Luther King once said: "The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice."

That's my prayer and I offer it for all those who have died on barricades, the world over ...

Oh yes, Les Miz is so much more that just a show!