British composer Keith Burstein, who ran up legal costs of £67,000 defending a test-case libel action, has been told he must declare bankruptcy if he wants to continue pursuing the case in a higher court.

The libel complaint stems from critic Veronica Lee‘s review of Burstein’s opera, Manifest Destiny, performed at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2005.  Lee wrote, “I found the tone depressingly anti-American, and the idea that there is anything heroic about suicide bombers is, frankly, a grievous insult”. Burstein claimed that this statement would lead readers to think him a terrorist sympathizer.

According to The Independent, an earlier decision by the Appeals Court on this case “was widely interpreted as a landmark decision in respect of the right of journalists to write scornful reviews.”