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Guests: Roy Hattersley – novelist, journalist and historian
Ben Richards – novelist and screenwriter
Anne McElvoy – Executive Editor, London Evening Standard

On this week’s Saturday Review, Sarfraz Manzoor presents a special New Year edition of the programme examining the current trend among playwrights, screenwriters and even novelists for fictionalising the immediate past.

These range from Peter Morgan’s dramatisation of the supposed Blair-Brown pact over the Labour leadership in his TV play The Deal, to David Hare’s staging of the build-up to the Iraq War in Stuff Happens at the National Theatre. What, Sarfraz asks, can works like this tell us that news and documentaries cannot?

With the help of the political journalist Anne McElvoy, Spooks writer Ben Richards and historian and former Labour Cabinet Minister Roy Hattersley, Sarfraz explores new and recent works that develop this trend.

David Hare’s current play Gethsemane examines the perils of Labour Party fundraising.

Oliver Stone’s recent movie W delved into the mind of President George W Bush.

Gordon Burn’s book Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel, published in spring 2008, took the reader on a journey through the strange summer of 2007, with its floods, failed terrorist attacks, McCann case coverage and change of Prime Minister.

And, going further back, the forthcoming film Frost/ Nixon – adapted by Peter Morgan from his stage play – explores the tense series of interviews in 1977 between David Frost and President Nixon, which led to the disgraced leader making an astonishing confession.

So how much difference does the time lapse between fact and fiction make? And why are writers so keen to dramatise the recent past – are they revealing hidden truths or their own lack of originality?

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