This should be interesting. Well, for us fans of potentially landmark defamation disputes. The London Evening Standard has failed to block a libel action from a composer who is suing them for defamation over a review of an opera about would-be suicide bombers which the paper said was "a grievous insult". The review was of Keith Burstein's opera 'Manifest Destiny'.
The opera, which imagined what would happen if potential Islamist suicide bombers renounced violence and destroyed their bombs, was composed in 2003, but was viewed in a different context when performed at the Edinburgh Festival last year, just six weeks after the July 7 London bombings. In that context the ES said: "The idea that there is anything heroic about suicide bombers is, frankly, a grievous insult".
Burstein says that he believes that statement defamed him by misrepresenting the nature of his work. The ES tried to have his defamation suit thrown out of court, but Mr Justice Eady last week gave the composer the OK to pursue his case, which should now go to court in the New Year.
Burstein, who once successfully sued the Times after it wrongly claimed he had orchestrated the booing of a modern opera, said last week: "I have always felt that what was said was an abuse of freedom of expression"