When "the Toffs" went "Rotten"

My new blog http://nestawynellisinlondon.blogspot.com does not replace my Paris blog http://nesta-wyninparis.blogspot.com Rather it adds the dimension of my life in the uk after 13 years in Paris. I will be commenting on lifestyles, politics, personalities, arts, love and new trends as well as giving my views of how London and the uk have changed during my absence.

Here, I am posting a review of a book by a British author who is well worth reading.

The Whitehall Mandarin by Edward Wilson

published by Arcadia Books Ltd on May 15^th 2014

Those were the days when ladies wore gloves. Arcadia Books’ cover for Edward Wilson’s, “The Whitehall Mandarin” shows an elegant, gloved woman walking into a Whitehall Office. The days were also those when public and private standards were collapsing and when, as Wilson’s protagonist Catesby remarks to his devious boss Henry Bone, “The toffs have gone rotten".

Much of Wilson’s gripping story centres on Vietnam where he served with US Forces prior to renouncing his citizenship. It also focuses on the UK Ministry of Defence where leading players are pawns in a complex game of lies and betrayals woven around the Mandarin’s enigmatic figure.

The early 1960’s were also the focus of Wilson’s 2013 novel, “The Midnight Swimmer” which plays on secret events behind the Cuba Crisis of 1962. As the plot of The Whitehall Mandarin unfolds we revisit Cliveden, scene of erotic parties, where a nubile young stripper from Murray’s Cabaret Club, Christine Keeler, played a key role in the demise of Defense Minister John Profumo and the fall of Macmillan’s government.

Cliveden in the early 1960’s is an alluring point of attachment for the English dimension of this singularly shocking tale, shocking because of the revelations its author makes about the inner corruption of crumbling political institutions. The elite running that world were, it seems weakened by amorality. The story opens us to an understanding of how the ruling class of Britain of the time became corrupted. There are mentions of Kim Philby and Guy Burgess by the fictional characters. In life as in fiction, privileged people who should have been more grateful to their country were working to undermine its fabric. Sexuality and secrecy about sexuality except between members of a special coterie, was one of the subtle raisons d’etre for this undermining of the Establishment. Homosexuality, in those days a criminal offence, had to be a secret and its practice led to other secrets and to vengefulness against the established moral order. A sexually deviant motif lies at the heart of Edward Wilson’s story where it plays its subtle undercurrent of sinister sounds under the melody of the main plot to its denouement.

The suspicious sudden death of Hugh Gaitskell and his replacement as Labour leader by Harold Wilson, plus the latter’s role as a suspected Soviet front man comes under scrutiny. While the suspicion about Harold Wilson, the suspected fellow traveler, is dismissed perhaps for legal reasons, that dismissal fails to convince the reader that Soviet collaboration among those high in politics and in espionage, was not a part of the rot affecting the British Establishment. The left and the right wings of the British ruling class seem to have been equally corrupted, to have suffered a failure of belief in the system that gave them their privileged lives. During the evolution of this story, we find ourselves doubting the trustworthiness of senior MI6 operators, civil servants and politicians. We become aware of the venal international manipulations that laid the foundations for the Vietnam War. A scene with an unnamed President (clearly Johnson) at the White House cues the reader about the close involvement between British and American leaders and secret services over the reasons for and pursuit of the Vietnam War.

This story is a natural sequel to “The Midnight Swimmer” which leads us along the mad precipice when the Kennedy Brothers in their embroilment with Castro and the Cuban Mafia almost brought civilization to its end.

This is a work of fiction with well-drawn characters and a deftly constructed plot but it reads at times like a documentary. Wilson, an academic, has researched his subject deeply but imparts much private experience and knowledge throughout his story telling. He is clearly writing about what he knows and there are only rare moments when a flight of imagination intrudes into this narrative that otherwise convinces one of the authenticity of the author’s material, his characters and his storytelling. When one reads Edward Wilson one feels sure one is only one step away from the truth of what really happened in that place and time. The result is a chilling conviction that history as it happened is not what we have been told.