Dominion

Acknowledgements

All novels, perhaps historical novels especially, are to some extent collaborative efforts. Dominion has benefited from the help of others more than most. First and foremost I must thank my wonderful editor and agent, Maria Rejt of Mantle/Macmillan, and Antony Topping of Greene & Heaton, and their excellent staff – especially Sophie Orme, Ali Blackburn and Susan Opie at Mantle and Chris Wellbelove at Greene & Heaton, who managed to track down a crucial 1999 Channel 4 documentary on the Great Smog of 1952.

My thanks to Maria and Antony are all the greater for their support when, following a long period of debilitating illness, which put the book behind schedule, I was diagnosed this year with bone-marrow cancer. Along with treatment, their faith in the book and in me has allowed it to be finished in time for October 2012 publication.

Becky Smith once again did an astonishingly speedy and accurate job of typing. Olivia Williams carried out some crucial research for me in London when I was not well enough to go there, and I am grateful for the excellent job she did.

Once again, I thank the group of friends who read the book in manuscript and commented on it comprehensively and perceptively as usual: Roz Brody, Mike Holmes, Jan King and William Shaw.

Lou Taylor, Professor of Dress and Textile History, and Dr Gillian Scott, both of the School of Humanities, University of Brighton, were very generous with their time in discussing aspects of social history and fashion during the period from the 1930s to the 1950s, which helped greatly in my construction of an alternate universe.

My warm thanks to Dr Francoise Hutton for discussing the type of medication Frank might have been on, and the modern history of mental hospitals.

Robert Edwards was very helpful in sharing his great knowledge of Sussex for the scenes set there. Martin Foster advised me, a complete ignoramus on the subject, on some basics of radio communication.

For the second book running, Rear-Admiral John Lippiett, Chief Executive of the Mary Rose Trust, helped me with naval matters, which are important at the end of the story, and I am grateful to him for taking time out from his work in completing the final stages of the new Mary Rose Museum, which will be opening in 2013. (I can reassure him that in my planned next novel, Matthew Shardlake will keep his feet firmly on dry land.) The Museum Appeal has done wonders in raising funds, but is still ?400,000 short of its target. When finished, it will have on display the greatest store of Tudor artefacts anywhere in the world, in a magnificent setting. More information and pictures can be found at www.maryrose.org. Donations for the final stages of the project can be sent via the website or to The Mary Rose Trust, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth PO1 3LX.

Alan Purdie at the British Legion was very helpful in providing details which helped me construct the 1952 Remembrance Day Ceremony in Chapter One. It is a very different Remembrance Day in my alternate universe, but I hope I managed to retain something of the atmosphere of respect which the ceremony deserves.

Any errors of fact in the book are, of course, my own responsibility.

Thanks to my friend Robyn Young for discussions of history and the strategy of book-writing, and support when times were tough. Thanks also to Paul Tempest and Peter Allinson for lending me their house to work in while building works were taking place in mine. And last but not least, to Graham Brown of Fullertons for frequent bouts of photocopying and limitless supplies of stationery.

Bibliographical Note

Dominion involved a greater range of background reading than any previous novel I have written.

On British social and political history from the 1930s to the 1950s, the most useful works were Angus Calder’s The People’s War: Britain 1939–45 (1971), still I think the best social history of wartime Britain. Also very useful were Juliet Gardiner’s The Thirties:An Intimate History (2010), and Wartime Britain 1939–45 (2004), and Richard Overy’s The Morbid Age: Britain between the Wars (2009).

Peter Hennessy’s Never Again: Britain 1945–51 (1992) and Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties (2000) are packed with fascinating information. David Kynaston’s Austerity Britain 1945–51 (2008) and Family Britain 1951–57 (2010) were also very helpful. I think Kynaston’s insight that, culturally, Britain in the decade following the Second World War retreated into a 1930s view on many social issues, is crucial. In the first decade after the war there were highly censorious attitudes to subjects like illegitimacy, homosexuality and divorce, and the belief that women belonged in the home returned after the war. In my alternate universe Britain in 1952 is even more like the 1930s, and without the social reforms and full employment created by the Attlee government of 1945–51.

On particular topics, Juliet Nicolson’s The Great Silence (2009) is a moving and evocative account of Britain coming to terms with the terrible losses of the First World War, which so affected Sarah’s family in my book. Barbara Tate’s West End Girls (2010) is a fascinating and extraordinary memoir of life in a Soho brothel of the period, and Dilys’ establishment in Dominion owes it much. The Channel 4 documentary Killer Fog (1999) tells the extraordinary story of the Great Smog of 1952 evocatively and with compassion for the many who died. Rupert Allason’s The Branch (1983) was a very useful brief introduction to the history of the Special Branch; though I suspect the author would disagree with my portrayal of how the Branch might have developed in an authoritarian Britain, I see it as perfectly probable.

Many novels helped me in reimagining the period, notably those of Patrick Hamilton. (The roadhouse where David and his party stop on the way to Birmingham owes something to the Kings Head in the third volume of his Gorse trilogy (1952–1955).) Norman Collins’ wonderful though sadly forgotten novel London Belongs to Me (1945) brings London uniquely to life during the traumatic years 1938–40. Noblesse Oblige, ed. Nancy Mitford (1956) includes her hilarious essay on snobbery and the use of language in contemporary society.

The story of Britain between the 1930s and 1950s is partly the story of empire in decline. Jan Morris’ Farewell the Trumpets (1976), the final volume of her Pax Britannica Trilogy, was particularly useful and evocative. I read a number of accounts of Civil Service life during the period, of which the most useful was undoubtedly Joe Garner’s The Commonwealth Office, 1925–68 (1968). Andrew Stewart’s Britain and the Dominions in the Second World War (2008) is a useful and informative recent academic study. Peter Hennessy’s Whitehall (1989) was also very helpful.

For Churchill and the crisis of May 1940, Roy Jenkins’ Churchill (2001) is I think the best single-volume biography to date. John Charmley’s Churchill: The End of Glory (1993) is exhaustively well-informed though exhaustingly biased against Churchill. On the other hand, Madhusree Mukerjee’s Churchill’s Secret War (2010), telling of his extraordinary callousness when it came to the Bengal famine of 1942, was a necessary douche of cold water for one like me who, remembering Churchill’s role in 1940, can perhaps incline to being too reverential.

On the Cabinet discussions over whether to make peace in 1940 I found Andrew Roberts’ Eminent Churchillians (1994) and The Holy Fox: A Life of Lord Halifax (1991) very useful, along with John Lukacs’ Five Days in London: May 1940 (2001) and Ian Kershaw’s Fateful Choices (2007). Richard Overy’s The Battle of Britain was very helpful at the early stages of my research. I had originally considered setting this book in a Britain where the proposed German invasion of Britain in 1940, Operation Sealion, had actually taken place. There has been much debate as to whether it could have succeeded and Overy’s book finally convinced me that it could not.

There was a substantial minority in Britain who in 1939–40, for various reasons, opposed undertaking what would inevitably be total mobilization for a life-or-death struggle against Nazi Germany. Many were pacifists; a few were Scottish Nationalists; the most important were anti-Semites and outright Nazis. Particularly helpful on these various individuals and groups were Thomas Linehan’s British Fascism 1918–39 (2000),