Thinly-veiled but enjoyable nonsense

J S Barnes

POLITICIANS HAVE LONG BEEN drawn to the writing of popular fiction. Some practitioners have made it to the very highest office. Benjamin Disraeli was the author of numerous novels while, two decades after publishing The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan served as the Governor General of Canada. More commonly, it is statesmen and women who have found themselves redundant (temporarily or otherwise) who discover that the lure of writing for the mass market is suddenly attractive. Iain Duncan Smith, mere months out of his old job as Tory leader, dashed off The Devil’s Tune, a slender volume set in the London art world which promised “a terrifying web of intrigue and deceit”. Alan Johnson’s The Late Train to Gipsy Hill offered a likeable everyman with the sitcom name of Gary Nelson…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2021

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