Dominion - CJ Sansom

The book follows members of the British Resistance in an alternate reality where Britain has surrendered to Germany, and is now a satellite state. The prime Minister is Beaverbrook. Churchill heads the Resistance.

As usual with Sansom's books we have strong sympathetic characters: David, a civil servant with marital problems, exacerbated by the accidental death of his two-year-old son; his wife Sarah;Günther Hoth, a German SS officer skilled in hunting down and capturing Jews, also with a broken marriage, and a genuine love for his adult son; Syme, a sycophantic pro-German Special Branch Englishman; Natalia, the Slovakian leader of the resistance cell.  There is a clear mission - to keep a scientist with a secret out of German hands, and arrange his escape to the USA.

Interestingly, at the end of the book Sansom explains his political views - from a conservative family, he became more left-wing.  His particular beef is the growth of nationalism in its many forms, which he considers to be the parent of "monster children: fascism, based on organised worship of the nation and Nazism, which worshipped not just nationality but race."  He fears that it is raising its head once more "in its rawest form: all across Europe, in France, Hungary, Greece, Finland, even Holland, and most worryingly perhaps in Russia, fiercely nationalist, anti-immigrant, and sometimes openly Fascist nationalist parties are significant forces in politics again."

He fears UKIP and the SNP are aspects of this, and lays out his evidence.

But aside from the politics, the book is well-written, and a very good story.

Winter in Madrid - CJ Sansom

I looked for this a couple of times last week after a friend mentioned Sansom's historical detective stories featuring Shardlake.  I couldn't find it. I wondered if I'd given it away.  Then, as usual, it turned up, just when I'd stopped searching.  So I'm reading it again.

I find myself involved with the characters in the way I used to be when much younger.

I finished it. The ending is sad in several ways, plus an odd twist at the end.   I find Sansom's writing impressive.


Guardian interview with the author