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It ought to be in Gordon Brown's stocking : another rave review for the wonderful Peter Cotton!
Monday, 30 Nov 2009
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The Times Christmas books: thrillersPeter Millar reviews Washington Shadow by Aly Monroe, The Times, 26 November 2009Dan Brown and Stephen King sold by the shelfload, while Stieg Larsson’s trilogy found a fiery closure. But Peter Millar finds many more stories to admire Down to earth in the grimy world of spooks and politicians, Washington Shadow by Aly Monroe (John Murray, £16.99) is the second in her splendid series on the jiggery-pokery of the global power game in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Her hero, Peter Cotton (not to be confused with Flopsy and Mopsy), is a conscript spy coming to the end of his National Service and sent to Washington to watch the economist John Maynard Keynes’s frantic attempts to borrow money on behalf of bankrupt Britain. In the process Cotton runs up against the harsh reality of the “special relationship”: that the “destruction of the British Empire” was one of America’s unspoken war aims, and that there are ambivalent attitudes to decolonisation in a country still steeped in racism. It’s an enlightened and engaging follow-up to The Maze of Cadiz and salutary reading for diehard Atlanticists. If only Tony Blair could have read it before he met George W. Bush; it ought to be in Gordon Brown’s Christmas stocking. |
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Salutary reading for diehard Atlanticists. If only Tony Blair could have read it before he met George W. Bush; it ought to be in Gordon Brown’s Christmas stocking
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