Roman Clodia's Reviews > A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment

This would be unbelievable if it weren't a true story! I only had a vague idea of the Jeremy Thorpe affair and envy those who lived through it as a live news story. Preston has done a superb job of reconstructing the case which involves gay sex (at a time when it was officially illegal), blackmail, lies, fraud and an outrageous murder conspiracy, all taking place within the highest echelons of Parliament and the Liberal party.

Preston allows the characters to be complicated, not least Thorpe himself, who stood against apartheid, for example, yet thought nothing of abusing his own privileged status and conducted himself throughout with an unassailable sense of entitlement.

The misconduct, hypocrisy, bare-faced lies and criminal behaviour of MPs is breathtakingly, even to a contemporary audience with a cynical view of the political establishment. And Preston doesn't pass up the opportunity to remind us that some of the players have only recently been uncovered as being involved in child abuse at the time of this story.

Truly, if this had been the plot of a fiction book I would have been scathingly deriding its unbelievability! A brilliantly readable account of a political scandal, and a wry reconstruction of a moment in history which saw the demise of the Liberal party and the election of Margaret Thatcher. I suspect this will be one of my non-fiction favourites of the year.