The Allegations
Page 46
#This guy’s history
#History
Prefixed with its deconstructed swastika, the word rolled down the screen as the unseen mob took up the silent chant.
#History
#History
#History
#History
#History
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It is common enough in a coda of this kind to stress that what precedes it is a work of fiction; but especially so in this case.
This novel is informed by having had passing acquaintance with more than one of those publicly suspected (with huge career and financial consequences) of serious sexual offences for which they were never subsequently charged. However, it draws on no particular accuser or accused.
In regard to another plot-strand, it is also the case that – during a long, generally privileged and happy career in the media – I suffered one devastating experience of institutional group-think, baffling and contradictory management, false accusation and surreally sub-legal process.
As a result, I have personal knowledge of the damage to reputation, employability and health that can result from such an ordeal, and of its paradoxical outcome: silence or ostracism from some of those I had considered friends or close colleagues and – the poignant opposite – startling kindness and courageous support from others, including many from whom I had no reason to expect anything.
However, if I had wanted to tell that story directly, I would have published a memoir; and may yet one day do so. Though my own corporate experiences inevitably affected aspects of the atmosphere of the novel, the narrative and characters are specific to the circumstances of a fiction that mainly concerns a fictional university.
Crucially, The Allegations was not written as a roman à clef and narrative – and possibly legal – jeopardy could result from attempting to read it as such.
In this fiction, Ned Marriott’s methods and beliefs as an historian owe much to the example of Lady Antonia Fraser Pinter, with whom I was lucky enough to have some illuminating exchanges on the subject. His documentary about seventeenthcentury suspicion of women might have got him into even more trouble if he and I had not read with such instructive enjoyment Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts by Tracy Borman (Jonathan Cape). As Professor Marriott acknowledges in the novel, his writing on moral crusades is significantly informed by Professor Donald Weinstein’s Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet (Yale). Professor Marriott’s historical writing has also clearly benefited from Peter Hennessey’s Never Again – Britain 1945–51 (Penguin) and America: A Narrative History by George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi (W.W. Norton).
Tom Pimm’s approach to American political history is gratefully indebted to the work of Barbara Tuchman, Robert A. Caro and Doris Kearns Goodwin. My – and his – working knowledge of occupants of the White House was usefully fact-checked and amplified by Nigel Hamilton’s American Caesars (The Bodley Head).
I read with great interest three articles about corporate branding and / or the suppression of dissent in modern universities: ‘Diary: Why I Quit’ by Marina Warner (London Review of Books, Volume 36, Number 17, 11 September 2014); ‘Open-door Policy?’ by Professor Thomas Docherty (Index on Censorship, Volume 44, Number 02, Summer 2015); and ‘I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me’, published under the pseudonym ‘Edward Schlosser’ (www.vox.com, June 3, 2015). However, the staff and students of the fictional UME bear no resemblance to any actual figures in higher education.
My sense of the chronology and psychology of Britain’s most notorious celebrity paedophile and sex-offender was usefully measured against Dan Davies’ tremendous book: In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile (Quercus). A technological aspect of the final scene in the novel was inspired by an actual event described in Chapter 3 of Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (Picador), a brilliant account of the social and moral consequences of inter-active advances.
Some of the technical and mental aspects of being under suspicion of sexual offences are drawn – though used to entirely fictional purpose – from No Further Action: The Darkest Year of My Life by Jim Davidson (John Blake), an eye-opening account of legal and reporting practices which, possibly due to the comedian’s unpopularity with the liberal media, has not perhaps received the attention it deserved.
The literary texts that Ned Marriott and Tom Pimm read with such empathetic fascination during their suspensions are: Heinrich Böll – The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (Vintage Classics); J. M. Coetzee – Disgrace (Vintage); Henrik Ibsen (translator Christopher Hampton) – An Enemy of the People (Faber); Franz Kafka – The Trial (Penguin Modern Classics); David Mamet – Oleanna in Plays: Four (Methuen); Arthur Miller – The Crucible (Penguin Modern Classics); Terence Rattigan – The Winslow Boy (Nick Hern Books); Philip Roth – The Human Stain (Vintage).
Tom Pimm listens to the audio-book version of Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world (Piatkus) by Mark Williams and Danny Penman, which I recommend to the tense or distressed.
The lines from ‘It Was Good While It Lasted’ by Blake Morrison appear in Shingle Street (Chatto). The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies, written by Peter Morgan, was broadcast by ITV in December, 2014.
The character of Dr (later Sir) Kevan Neades first appeared, working at a different institution and with completely different dialogue, in my radio play, What Did I Say? (BBC Radio 4, 2008).
Ciara Harrison and Elaine Benham bid to give their names to characters in this novel at charity auctions held respectively for The Sam Griffiths Foundation and Walk the Walk.
I am grateful to – apart from those in the initial dedication – Catherine Fehler for her legal brain and warm heart; Jonathan Moore for spiritual advice; Joanne Sharp for explaining flexiboarding and Colin Sharp for a knowledge of business that lives up to his surname. Many colleagues at the Guardian – especially Rosie Swash, Rebecca Nicholson, Chris Wiegand, Susanna Rustin and Michael Billington – did more than they will suspect to restore my confidence at the worst times and I will always be grateful for their support and kindness. At other places, Eoin O’Callaghan, Polly Thomas, Ben Preston, Ellie Austin, Fiona Hughes and Roy Williams were kind and wise.
The sympathetic interest and attention of Emma Bravo, Paul Baggaley, Kris Doyle and Camilla Elworthy at Picador also helped to save me from one possible outcome to the events. Nicole Foster’s copy-editing was intelligent and sensitive.
Many others, in several institutions, who gave me great assistance – practically, psychologically, generously – know who they are, but would rather that their names are not mentioned here because, it pains me to say in the context of this novel, of fear of the consequences at their places of work.
MARK LAWSON
March 2016