It was while watching Matthew Dunster’s excellent, pacy ensemble staging for Out Of Joint (now playing in London towards the end of a national tour) that I realised why I so like David Edgar’s writing. Edgar has fallen some way out of fashion in recent years: respected, even revered, but not feted in an immediate way.

That is because his kind of liberalism has also become passé: a kind that is not afraid to talk turkey rather than waffling in buzz-phrases. When Edgar examines a topic, he asks questions that are not rhetorical nor ends in themselves: he actually wants answers. He recognises this process must also include an honest examination of our own standpoint.