Upport
Nicholas Royle writes:
This summer I had a complete breakdown. We were on a family holiday on a campsite in France. Until it happened, I refused to believe. It reminded me of when my first loved one died. We had a marvellous first couple of days. The children played at the waterpark. My wife enjoyed the strong sunshine. I stayed in our little cabin rereading To the Lighthouse for the first time in forty years. It gave me extraordinary pleasure. Then on the third day I read on my phone that the British government had voted to proscribe Palestine Action. Following some vandalism to murder-making aircraft and to a dictator’s golf-course.
It was a complete breakdown and I am still having it. I tried to go on reading To the Lighthouse and keep my disintegration to myself. But it was unlike anything that had ever happened to me. It tore out every page like the days of a calendar in an old film.
It is nothing compared with the genocide of Palestinians and destruction of Gaza. It is perhaps just (in Adania Shibli’s searing euphemism) a minor detail. But to face fourteen years in prison for expressing support for a protest group? To say or write that single word support – an imprisonable offence?
So this is our fate, the fate of Britain. How to fight madness with madness?
In my breakdown the word support played with me, insupportable. It too broke down. Deliriously a neologism came, here ventured publicly: upport. To upport is to mentally upload, to give consideration to, to take cognizance of.
I oppose genocide. I, in the strongest possible sense, upport Palestine Action. Do it in your sleep in a transegmental drift. Everyone can do this. Upport Palestine Action. All worthy of the name, all British citizens upport Palestine Action.
Nicholas Royle was Professor of English at the University of Sussex between 1999 and 2022. He wrote this piece especially for Newhaven’s inaugural Hey! Festival, performing it there on Saturday 18th October 2025. His 16 books include An English Guide to Birdwatching: A Novel and, most recently, David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine.
