Zaffre paperback edition - 2022
I am afraid that when I read the name of the author of the novel (kindly given as a Christmas present by my daughter), the image that came immediately to mind wasn't overly flattering. Peston is in a long line of people who are remembered as much for their strangled vowels or other speech oddities as for their actual thoughts. One of the early faces on television was that of the sainted Malcolm Muggeridge who, rather like Saint Augustine, wanted chastity "but not yet" (Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo). More memorable were the grimaces and contortions which constantly erupted across his gargoyle-like face as he expounded yet one more hypocritical point of view (was there a hornet trying to escape from his mouth?) Lloyd Grossman was another who wrestled with the dictates of 'correct' pronunciation - it was not enough to say that it was mid-Atlantic, even though it should have been drowned. In a different way, Ted Heath is remembered by me as much for his cringeworthy vocal chords as for his appalling tenure of office - did Lord Curzon sound like that?
Well, once I got past the nameplate, I settled down to the book. As with so many first novels, it reeks of autobiography. The very first page wrote itself from Peston's own experiences. He wrote for the Financial Times, his alter ego for the Financial Chronicle. He describes himself as culturally Jewish - so is the novel's main protagonist (he is not a 'hero') Gilbert Peck. The Peston/Peck father seems remarkably similar: Bernard Peck, world-renowned Professor of Sociology and Politics at the London School of Economics, fellow of the British Academy, adviser to successive (and now dead) Labour leaders... compared with Maurice Peston, founder of the economics department at Queen Mary College, London, advisor to various government departments and Labour Secretaries of State from the 1960s through to the 1990s. Maurice Peston died in 2016 - did this give the go-ahead for his son to write books including him? Certainly the uncomfortable fictional father-son Peck relationship feels close to home. Peck is an Oxbridge-educated, know-it-all Jew shunned by other hacks - is that written with some bitterness by Peston?
Peston admits he drank too much at university - Balliol College, Oxford, if you must know and Peck is no stranger to the bottle and more; whether the author enjoyed a clandestine sex life is another matter. Peck certainly does with Marilyn Krol, with her greying white T-shirt, with a fading Labour red rose on the front and silk culotte knickers, who has one objective (two, if you include her romps with Peck) - to install Johnny Todd in Number 10. Todd (the closest thing to Hollywood that British politics has seen since, well, ever) is a shoe-in for Tony Blair and a variety of other real politicians of the mid-late nineties make their appearance under nom de plumes: Sir Peter Ramsey - John Major; the smoothy Tory Keith Kendall - could be one of several real-life MPs in Major's sleaze-ridden government!
There is also the deeply unpleasant South African-born billionaire Jimmy Breitner, owner of The Globe - surely an amalgam of the Czech-born Robert Maxwell (The Daily Mirror) and Australian-born Rupert Murdoch (The News of the World and The Sun). Maxwell is actually mentioned as a crook in the novel.
Peck's sister, Clare, gets the plot rolling by being knocked off her bike, dying in St. Thomas's Hospital of her injuries. Whilst dozing next to Clare's bedside, Peck hears a man's voice with the tones of someone feigning classlessness, like a BBC presenter (that surely was an early giveaway, as well as a shaft at Peston's ex-employers). What originally appears to be bad luck takes on a sinister twist. Yes, skullduggery is afoot in the corridors of power as well as on the streets of the Great Wen. Clare certainly had a good take on her brother's (and Peston's) work: a scavenger on the scrapheap of better men's efforts. The novel is dedicated To my darling sister Juliet - thankfully very much alive but also once hospitalised after a car crash and not expected to live. What she thought of her brother's first effort (particularly what emerges about Clare's sex life and with whom) is probably best kept within the Peston family.
Clare's PA is Jeremy MacDonald (tortoiseshell glasses, North Face anorak and mousey hair), A character to keep an eye on throughout the book.
There are some nice touches - both regarding the characters and snippets of dialogue, but the prose is occasionally 'clunky' and it is obvious that Peston has a journalist's style rather than a novelist's. If half of what he writes is based on his own experiences, then the world of politics is claustrophobic, murky, self-serving and distasteful. But we knew that anyway, didn't we?
To end on a plus - Peston, apparently, likes John Buchan's novels.
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