Michael Dobbs is a charming, intelligent and self-effacing man, but you would not have guessed it from the blurb on the dust-jacket of his latest political thriller. ‘Michael Dobbs always makes an impact,’ it tells us.
How can he possibly have approved this guff?He has worked with prime ministers, written about kings, and always seems to be in the right spot at vital moments in history. His experiences have led him to be described as a man who, in Latin America, would have been shot.
Winston’s War has an intriguing plot, based on the real-life meeting between Guy Burgess and Winston Churchill at Chartwell at the time of the Munich crisis. It uses suspense well, as Dobbs managed so successfully in his House of Cards trilogy. The Francis Urquhart character, so memorably played by Ian Richardson in the television series, is split between two protagonists this time, with Neville Chamberlain’s cronies, Sir Joseph Ball and Sir Horace Wilson, taking the roles of sinister plotters, appeasement’s evil fixers.
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