FOREIGN Secretary and South West Surrey MP Jeremy Hunt has shown solidarity with a Farnham man’s desperate campaign to free his wife from jail in Iran, after attending a special performance of ‘Nazanin’s Story’ in London.

The powerful play, written and directed by Emi Howell, is based on the ongoing ordeal of Thomson Reuters Foundation staff member Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and her husband Richard Ratcliffe’s heart-breaking two-and-a-half year battle to bring his wife and daughter home.

Mr Hunt attended the one-off performance at the Barbican Centre with his wife Lucia, and afterward he addressed Nazanin’s live case in a question-and-answer session alongside Mr Ratcliffe, who grew up in Farnham, the play’s director, and Thomson Reuters Foundation chief executive Monique Villa.

Mr Hunt praised Richard and Nazanin as “totally incredible people”.

And he added: “I’ve got a daughter as well and I can’t imagine the pain that you’re both going through.”

He also addressed Richard’s “truly agonising” decision to ‘go public’ against the advice of the Foreign Office.

“Most people in these kinds of situations want to find a way of moving on and escaping, but what Richard is doing is reliving the pain over and over again, accentuating it in a way, and that is a very brave thing to do,” he said.

“It is important that people know that this kind of thing happens, and I think it also says something about our values as a country that we are prepared to go this far, that people like Richard have a platform and get the support, have a medium behind them and are able to criticise the politicians in a way that doesn’t happen in other countries. I think that is really important.”

The Foreign Secretary also praised the cast at the Barbican for “an incredible job” but, referring to their portrayal of the British Government and the misguided comment by his predecessor, Boris Johnson, that Nazanin was “training journalists”, added they were a “tiny bit unfair”.

Elaborating, Mr Hunt admitted “foreign secretaries make mistakes” but said the Foreign Office has been trying “very, very hard” to get Nazanin out of jail and that Boris was “mortified” by his error.

“These are really impossible situations, and I don’t want to give you false hope by thinking that because I’m showing interest that means the end is any closer,” he said, turning to Richard. “But I do think that everyone has to do everything they can - that is what it is all about.

“In Britain, we tend to have a feeling of woe is nigh about our own country, and we forget that from the outside people think of Britain as very prosperous and successful. They see us as a country with a lot of clout in the world, and I personally feel that there’s not much point in having all of that clout unless you are prepared to come to the rescue of people in difficulties.”

The play, which will give its final performance on October 23 at the Houses of Parliament, begins on April 3, 2016, when Nazanin and her baby daughter Gabriella were taken by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

It goes on to cover every agonising development in Nazanin’s story, from solitary confinement to her deteriorating mental and physical health, every nerve-racking trial and heartbreaking false dawn and, cruellest of all, the “denial of motherhood”.

For more details about the #FreeNazanin campaign, visit the website freenazanin.com.