Today's guest blog post is by Peter
Bradshaw who is the Guardian film critic. He also co-wrote and acted in David
Baddiel's sitcom Baddiel's Syndrome. The debut crime caper from Peter Bradshaw Night of Triumph brings us back to
VE night, 1945, when the teenage princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, were
allowed to leave the palace incognito and join the parties and festivities with
their subjects. The Palace was forced to
issue a statement that the episode was without incident; but what if…?
I have never attempted pure crime fiction, but my new novel
has a criminal person and a criminal act near its centre: Night of Triumph, based on the true story of how Princess Elizabeth
was allowed out of the Palace on VE Night 1945 to mingle incognito with the
crowds. I have certainly enjoyed placing
my trembling toe in the murky waters of procedural detail. In 2003, when I was writing my second novel,
Dr Sweet And His Daughter, the fact that it was about an ordinary chap who
becomes a hero for accidentally killing someone in a convenience store forced
me to engage with how the criminal justice system might look to some ordinary
middle-class guy who is astonished to find himself up close and personal with
the police. I interviewed a good friend
of mine, a barrister, about what happens and when and why and how, and every
detail he disclosed was a separate gleaming jewel in a fictional Aladdin’s cave. It was thrilling. No wonder writers and readers are intoxicated
by genre fiction. When my lead character
was arrested near the beginning of the book, simply reciting the words of the
caution was a thrill: “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm
your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later
rely on in court. Anything you do say
may be used in evidence.”
For this new book, looking into various aspects of the
legend of VE Night, I became inspired by one of the most fascinating books I
have ever come across about the 1940s and the home front: Donald Thomas’s An Underworld At War: Spivs, Deserters,
Racketeers and Civilians in the Second World War. Naively, I think I assumed that just as
normal party politics was suspended for the duration of the war to create a
National Government, then surely regular criminal activity would have been
temporarily put on hold in the interests of patriotism and tackling the larger
criminal: Adolf Hitler.
Nonsense, of course. Crime
flourished. It wasn’t simply the
question of cheap goods on the “black market” — though it’s
surprising how many people now don’t grasp that these goods were cheap and
furtively available because they had been stolen — but the fact that
a dedicated class of persistent and professional criminals used the chaos in
embattled London as a cover for wrongdoing and pure greed. Bombed buildings were frequently looted. Once the inhabitants of damaged houses were
removed to places of safety, their homes were horribly vulnerable to being
stripped of valuables. Officials and
wardens would return to the charred shells of houses to find that the gas meter
had been emptied of sixpences. In
addition, my reading uncovered the shocking and undiscussed rumours that the
wardens themselves may have succumbed to the temptation to help themselves. There is a whiff of pure evil about the crime
being discussed here, a whiff that it would not have had in peacetime, because
home-front crime was highly damaging to morale and the petty thieves were
Hitler’s useful idiots.
In Night of Triumph,
I made my character Mr Ware one of them.
He is a nasty piece of work, a lowlife and a deserter who has found the
war a six-year-long career opportunity in crime. I wanted him to be a Greeneian character in
some ways, but without the introspection — the more reflective
qualities are given to the book’s lead character, Princess Elizabeth. In my book Elizabeth is unworldly, perhaps
more unworldly than was actually the case — but it is this
unworldliness, combined with dangerous carnival of VE Night, which brings her
into contact with Mr Ware. There is
taboo and terror in their encounter.
What to write next? I
am drawn to the 1940s period, perhaps especially to that of the post-war Attlee
government. In addition, I am fascinated
in the idea of a straight crime novel. Crime
poses unique challenges. The details
have to be right. The narrative has to
grip, and of course, there is no alibi for slack or indulgent writing. Surely, my criminal adventure cannot end
here.
*Night of Triumph
by Peter Bradshaw is published by Duckworth 31 January, £12.99
No comments:
Post a Comment