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When Swift wrote Gulliver early in the 18th century, the world across the seas was opening up to exploration and discovery. Two year voyages were common. Journals of these were being published, telling of strange customs and practices, of 'savages' who went around naked, practised free love, and worshipped strange gods. Metal was unknown to them. Captain Cook was hard put to stop his crew trading the ship's nails for sex.The myth of the exotic caught hold, to be recreated by Gauguin a century and a half later and to be pursued in another guise in our own time via the hippie trail to Goa and Khatmandu. 

It's said that when the islanders first beheld the enormity of a great oceangoing ship, it was so utterly outside their experience they refused to believe it was there. Perspective is all.

And so we come to Lilliput, with its simple premise: a race of people just six inches high with all the pretensions and self-importance of ourselves. All satire does this - invites us to see ourselves as in a distorting morror, all the more accurate because the distortions highlight what might otherwise be glossed over by plausible spin. Readers in his own day would have recognised his models - political leaders, courtiers - they're all there. But, such was his genius, they're universal and speak to all cultures and readers young and old. Swift sure started something - every other satirist worth the name has followed in his wake. Lewis Carroll, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh - it's legion. Once you read Orwell's words, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others", it's impossible ever after to forget them. They've passed not just into the language but into the way we think. Same with Swift with his leaping and creeping as the route to high honours and positions of power, what today we call the greasy pole of politics. Once you've seen it on the printed page (or, better still, heard one of our actors via the magic of radio) you're never likely to forget it. 

Going to war over an egg? Well, do we in our own world, being six feet high and all, do much better? Affecting to believe immigrants will eat us out of house and home when the proven fact is they are net contributors to the economy? Looking for fame and glory by enslaving others, sycophants to those in power, claiming to have a corner on truth, asserting the supremacy of one set of beliefs (our own) over all others - can we honestly be sure we're not Lilliputians in some corner of ourselves at least? Enjoy!

Leslie Caplan, January 2005

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The new words to the old Polynesian sea-shanty go rather fast and are easily missed, but provide a commentary on the action, so here they are:

I heard, yes I heard yon Gulliver say 
Lilliput, Lilliput, tulai-e! 

Palm of your hand, not six inch high 

Tulai-e, ooh! Tulai-e! 
Lilliput, Lilliput, tulai-e! 

We'll search the seas over, an island to find 
We'll search the seas over, that island to find 

South from Sumatra, well that's as may be 
I only know farther than sea beyond sea 

A dot on the map and its people to match 
Look out even there for an emperor's snatch 

Such littluns' concernins - my god what a fate - 
Match sceptre and orb with our own royals' state 

Their ship didn't make it nor all aboard lost 
Save Gulliv' to tell it the sea's cruel cost 

Haul away, haul away, what shall we say? 
We'll learn you, we'll learn you 
Or take home no pay