Iain Banks

Iain’s politics are made clear in his writing across both in his literary fiction and the Culture in his science fiction.

In 2003, Iain cut up his passport in protest against Tony Blair’s support of the US-led invasion of Iraq.  He had this to say: “I actually got it back a couple of weeks after Blair left office – that was my criterion – and I was expecting a bit of fuss about it.  It was difficult to explain on the form.  They didn’t have an option for cutting it up for political reasons.  I had to squeeze my explanation into the small box that they give you: ‘Sent to PM in protest at Iraq war.’  When they said ‘where did you lose your passport?’ it was somewhere between the local post box and 10 Downing Street.”

Asked if he had plans to tear up his new passport for Gordon Brown he said, “Well, no.  You can do it once, but doing it twice is just petulance, frankly.  It was more just sheer anger.  I couldn’t think of any other attachment to the British state I had that I could do anything with.  Once I abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns, I decided to self-harm instead.”