Dominion

Product Information

Sansom's fictionalised portrayal of some historical figures such as Lord Beaverbrook, Oswald Mosley, Enoch Powell and Marie Stopes as members of a collaborationist puppet government caused some controversy. This could have been a great book but ultimately it's quite a dull read and I was actually relieved to reach the last page.

One suspenseful chase between a resistance spy and a Nazi occurs during the Great Smog of London in 1952, something I had been unaware of. And for what it's worth, I think the multiplicity of viewpoints was a mistake, one that stopped the story being in any way exciting.The twist with Geoff is incredible and I went from shocked to gutted to shocked to gutted in the space of a few chapters of his story, all told from other characters' points of view. Whilst I found the first third of the 600+ page novel slow, it kicks off with Fitzgerald ‘s exposure as an agent and then romps along to the finish. In the universe of this novel, we made peace with Germany in 1940 and the Facist regime has been our ally for the past 15 years or so.

I really enjoyed the first half of this novel – as the author paints the picture and sets the stage. For fourteen pages, he does this relatively well - but the final four pages are (somewhat bizarrely) taken up with a diatribe against the SNP and dismissing even the possibility that an independent future for Scotland could be anything other than a deeply retrograde step. I love David as a character, and I'm sad that the relationship with his wife before the death of their son, Charlie, wasn't explored more deeply. But what of people who did not grow up in Britain around this time; must they rely on other reading to provide the background against which Sansom's book works so brilliantly? Hitler is still in charge of most of Europe, but is suffering from health issues and hasn’t been seen for a long time.

A few things have changed, of course: the Jewish-owned Lyons Corner Houses are now British Corner Houses, and right-wing politicians such as Mosley and Powell are in the ascendant, though other latterly-famous names such as Butler and Douglas-Home nonetheless have senior positions in the post-treaty government. He has a doctorate in history; so, if that’s any measure, he is qualified enough to treat the subject with imaginative insight and a high degree of verisimilitude and empathy. Halifax, the Foreign Minister and a noted appeaser, is favoured by Chamberlain, the King and most of the Tory Party. He certainly has the political thriller genre pretty much down, with different groups—resistance agents, British and German police, wives and innocent acquaintances—spiralling each other, colliding and bouncing off again, and eventually coming together in a nail-biting climax.

Is this the same Beaverbrook that Michael Foot, a former Labour leader and respected leftwing journalist, describes with such warmth and affection in his essay collection Debts of Honour? David is drafted by the Resistance to find out what the secret a patient in a mental hospital, an old school classmate is keeping and if possible get him out of England. It's just a case of watching it all plod along, with very few unanswered questions to hook the reader's interest.Through the tall windows and warm spring day was fading, shadows lengthening on Horse Guards Parade.