the devils walk : inspirations
It was one of the Fabian's (I think it may have been GBS but annoyingly I have forgotten which - email me if you know) who said that novelists should not only convey what they have observed but also what they have learned. The Devils Walk is an aggregation of what I have learned from thirty years of observation.
It may, of course, be of no interest to you or may just believe that I am wrong; that I have drawn entirely the incorrect conclusions from my observations. Fair enough and why not? However, I thought it might be useful to give you some idea of the sources. Some that have had a direct affect on the book and some who have had a more general affect on my life.
The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley
Matt Ridley'sThe Origins of Virtue was, for me, like having the light switched on in a gloomy room. I had been struggling for some time with how the ideas of the Evolutionists actually worked as a way of thinking about the world; I could see some shapes but not sufficiently sharply to for them to resolve into anything meaningful.
In just 300 pages Matt Ridley makes sense of it all. In essence nothing we do is a divine gift; altruism is not a Christian invention, nor is reciprocity – our instincts, such as they are, come from millions of years of learning how to spread our genes and how to promote the success of the group so that it will be more effective in promoting the needs of the individual.
Although The Origins of Virtue had no direct influence on The Devils Walk, the ideas that it raised drove me to find the answers. The exclamation that Dorrell makes in Chapter one: “Damn it, even love’s not special” arose directly out the pages of The Origins of Virtue and, as Dorrell's story is essentially one of how to live in a world where this is true, then I cannot underestimate its influnce.
Bad Men Do what Good Men Dream by Robert I Simon
Occasionally you come across the book whose title is so powerful that reading the book itself seems unnecessary. Bad Men Do what Good Men Dream by Robert I Simon is a case in point. The title is an aphorism; an entire concept captured in a single sentence and it is is this simple idea that lies behind The Devils Walk.
It's all about the line in the sand. If Robert Simon is to be believed, and he certainly makes a compelling case in the book, then a murderer lurks within all of us. Happily, for the vast majority of us that's where it stays. Tragically, for some, dreams become reality. What causes us to cross the line is not straightforward; clearly it will include people who are in a psychotic state, but it will also include many who are not. For these genetic, congenital and environmental factors will combine to divert their moral compass and start them on a path to a point where the temptation to resist the urge to 'do bad' is overwhelming. This process can last less than a second or can be the consequence of years of pressure.
In James Dorrell I have set out to create a character who crosses the line. What causes him to do this is up to the reader to decide; are there excuses or simply explanation? Is he just plain bad? To what extent was he in control the decisions he makes? These all universal questions with no universal answers.
In his book Robert I Simon presents a series of case studies which go some way to answer them and it is a fascinating read. It was a pity that my attitude to the whole book was tempered by a declaration in the introduction that one of the good Doctor's tasks in life was to assess death row prisoners for their psychological suitability to be executed. I was surprised that a man clearly blessed with above average intelligence would believe that such a thing existed; just exactly what state of mind is a person in to be deemed 'suitable' to be killed I ask myself?
The justice game by geoffrey robinson
I had read a number of books on the experience of being a barrister in the British justice system before I came across The Justice Game and it wasn't until this moment that I really understood what it was all about.
James Dorrell is not Geoffrey Robertson and I sincerely hope that a lawyer who has fought and won some of the most keenly contested litigation over the last 50 years won't be coming after me! However, when writing the passages of Dorrell at the Bar Geoffrey Robertson has been my companion. His highly principled approach to justice rightly attracts the respect of his peers and demands ours. It was from him I learned a couple of important 'tricks of the trade' which crop up in the book; firstly, in cross-examination, never ask a question you don't know the answer to and secondly, never use your opponents argument for yourself.
The rebel by albert camus
The Rebel is the book that Fr. Ignace gives to Dorrell in Chapter One. It is an extended essay in which Camus picks up the baton from Nietzsche and draws Nitzsche's work on Existentialism to its logical conclusion.
Even Camus most enthusiastic supporters would be hard pressed to say that every word of The Rebel is accessible to the layman. I'm not a philosopher and philosophy, like all disciplines, has its own language, unless you understand that language there are bound to be ideas that remain somewhat impenetrable. However, if the detail can sometimes be a little tough to digest, the broad sweep of Camus' arguments are very approachable.
The Devils Walk is by no means fictionalisation of The Rebel but it does make fictive use of some of his ideas about individual freedom, choice, the dignity of man and the rebellion of against the absurdity of life.
Red Shelley by paul foot
Astonishingly, for nearly 150 years after his death, the only works of Shelley that were published were his lyrical poems. This travesty was epitomised by Isobel Quigley in the introduction to the 1956 Penguin Edition of Shelley in which she states" No poet better repays cutting; no great poet was ever less worth reading in his entirety.'
Red Shelley is something of a rarity in that it's a revisionist work by an unashamed Communists that doesn't try to bend the works of an artist to fit the Communist manifesto. The fact is Paul Foot didn't need any smoke and mirrors as it's all there. Shelley wrote the Communist manifesto 50 years before Karl Marx - and somewhat more lyrically. All Paul Foot needed to do was to point this out.
I hope the family of the late Mr Foot will forgive me for making him something of an inspiration for Dorrell. Like Dorrell he went through the English Public School system witnessing sadistic beatings. (Although his housemaster, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, has undoubted similarities to Stafford-Laurents – the Frenchifying of Laurence to Laurents happened quite by chance – the actual inspiration for Stafford-Laurents lies elsewhere.) He also, like Dorrell attended University College, Oxford.
Paul Foot's politics were probably slightly left of Dorrell's and he was certainly much more of a political animal, however, they both have in common the shift from the traditions of their upbringing in middle-class English society of the 1960s, to a liberal view of the world not normally associated with this kind of background.
Just to keep the libel writs at bay I would stress that this is where the similarities end. Apart from being someone who I greatly admired (if I was inclined to the idea of having heros he would be one of them) Paul Foot was married twice and therefore presumably not gay, neither, as far as I'm aware, was he an alcoholic nor was he a paedophile He did, however, share a form of madness with my father in that he was a life-long Plymouth Argyle supporter.
Cries Unheard by Gitta Sereny
I could not, of course, created the character of Rhoda McNeice (Chapter 18) without having Mary Bell in the back of my mind.
One of the major motivations behind The Devils Walk is the idea that there is no such thing as absolute evil or absolute good. In the introduction to Cries Unheard Gitta Sereny says that in meeting with the adult Mary Bell and, after spending extensive time in her company, people can change. I read this around ten years ago and it still resonates.
Whereas I would never wish to play down the anguish and the pain felt by the victims of crime and their families I don't want to live in a world where punishment is driven by revenge or by a desire to balance the victim's pain with some kind of 'appropriate' punishment.
I have had a good deal to do, in my life, with prisoners on death row in America and I have met both the accused and their victims family. Not once have encountered anyone in the latter group who found that taking 'an eye for an eye' and killing the person who killed their relative to be in any way cathartic. Whilst sentencing is influenced by a braying mob with pitchforks there is no hope for any of us.
What Mary bell did, as a child, was hard to forgive and harder still to understand and is much too complex to be explained by simply calling it 'evil'. I urge anyone who is interested in this subject to read this book. It leaves the reader with an uncomfortable feeling that, on the frequent occasions that we bay for blood when confronted by a horrendous crime, we are only calling for the death of part of ourselves.
The Shadow World ::
Inside the Global Arms Trade by Andrew Feinstein
The antics of Akbar Pahlavia and Aaron Hampshire are all drawn from truths found inside Andrew Feinsteins's masterful and exhaustive work on the global arms trade. The most depressing aspect of this book is the fact that you couldn't make it up; so I haven't, although I have changed names and locations the facts in The Devils Walk are broadly true.
Every time you think you have reached an apogee of corruption and misery the arms dealers of the world go one better. The tonnage of arms shipped becomes greater, the money involved more unbelievable, the politicians more high profile, the immiseration of the defenceless victims more complete. So much so, in fact, that I had to draw back from making use of the greatest excesses for fear of losing credibility. How much I would like to think that the pen is mightier than the sword in the case of Andrew Feinstein but the reverse is true. All 704 pages will end up having about as much effect on the trade as a feather would be in chopping down an oak tree. He's a thought to leave you with; Feinstein reveals that the combined costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars is $1.092trn, in 2011 the US budget deficit was $1.5trn.
The Flashman Books by george MacDonald Fraser
I first read Flashman when I was 11 years old – the last one I read (re-read) was this summer. That's 41 years of unbridled reading pleasure.
I have to admit that I'm a bit of a literary snob (Goethe was on my holiday reading list this year), but I don't care what anyone thinks – if you want a master class in storytelling then look no further than George MacDonald Fraser.
In my opinion GMFs Flashman in one of the great literary creations of the last hundred years. For those who don't know he's the bully and the cad from Tom Brown's School Days. In the first two novels GMF sticks to the rules and, whilst these are great reads, Flashman is not very likeable.
The problem is GMF can't resist him and eventually neither can anyone who reads on beyond Vols I & II. Whilst he is always and absolute bounder, a cad and a coward who would (and does) sell almost anything to save his own skin, there's more going on than initially meets the eye. Through him GMF exposes the vanity, the folly, the greed and the lust for power that thrives in the world. Many would argue that the reverse is true and that Flashman is the epitome of all this and more. Amongst his many bad character traits he demeans women and is an unashamed racist. However on closer inspection it becomes apparent that GMF is pulling the Alf Garnet trick. It's only because Flashman is as he is, that we can see how terrible a place the world can be, and, like Alf Garnet, he just can't help but like him.
Apart from his characterisation of Flashman, what I most admire and envy about GMF is his absolutely genius for weaving a tale around the known facts of history and then making that history as exciting and as thrilling as it ever was. Throughout the eighty or so years of his life Flashman joins the retreat from Kabul, fights in the Indian Mutiny, charges with Light Brigade, is present at Little Big Horn, finds himself at Harpers Ferry with John Brown, witnesses the opening shots of the American Civil War, is with Gordon in China and Napier in Abyssinia (and much more besides). Never once does it seem the least implausible that he should have been where he was and it would not be surprising if some unwitting readers went to their history books to find him. Through meticulous research and careful plotting GMF pulls of the trick of inserting Flashman every time without in least disturbing the actual facts. He is an inveterate footnoter and whenever you feel that he's gone to far and fictionalised an account, a little note at the back of the book will confirm that it's all true.
In citing real events in The Devils Walk, including the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and later the Al Yamamah arms deal, I owe a debt to GMF and am ashamed at my pathetic attempts at imitation. If you would like to see how it should be done then please go to Amazon and indulge.
If I am to point out to regret in this otherwise hagiographical account it would be the coverage of an extensive interview that GMF gave to the Sunday Times towards the end of his life, in which he declared himself an unrepentant apologist for Margaret Thatcher in both her politics and economics. Ah well – seldom are our hero's saints!