Editing Harold Pinter (section)

===Légion d'honneur===
On 18 January 2007, French Prime Minister [[Dominique de Villepin]] presented Pinter with France's highest civil honour, the [[Légion d'honneur]], at a ceremony at the French embassy in London.  De Villepin praised Pinter's poem "American Football" (1991) stating: "With its violence and its cruelty, it is for me one of the most accurate images of war, one of the most telling metaphors of the temptation of imperialism and violence."  In response, Pinter praised France's opposition to the war in Iraq.  M. de Villepin concluded: "The poet stands still and observes what doesn't deserve other men's attention. Poetry teaches us how to live and you, Harold Pinter, teach us how to live."  He said that Pinter received the award particularly "because in seeking to capture all the facets of the human spirit, [Pinter's] works respond to the aspirations of the French public, and its taste for an understanding of man and of what is truly universal".<ref name=FE>{{cite web |url=http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/Legion-d-honneur-for-Harold-Pinter.html |title=Légion d'Honneur for Harold Pinter |last=France in the United Kingdom |work=French Embassy in the UK |date=17 January 2007 |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717003151/http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/Legion-d-honneur-for-Harold-Pinter.html |archive-date=17 July 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6273365.stm |title=French PM honours Harold Pinter |last=Staff |work=[[BBC News]] |date=18 January 2007 |publisher=[[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] |location=London |access-date=26 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110813095244/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6273365.stm |archive-date=13 August 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Lawrence Pollard observed that "the award for the great playwright underlines how much Mr Pinter is admired in countries like France as a model of the uncompromising radical intellectual".<ref name=FE/>