Book of the Week

A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin

Recommended by Luca Orlandi

A Very British Coup is a classic political thriller written by former Labour MP Chris Mullin. It details a series of events in which far left Labour Prime Minister Harry Perkins is democratically elected under a mandate of nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from NATO, the dismantlement of monopolies, the removal of American military bases and other radical policies. However the established institutions, including MI5, media magnates and the USA immediately start to plot to undermine his power and ultimately cause his downfall. 

The story uses a scarily large amount of non-fictional elements to make the novel believable, combined with a fictional plot and characters to create an overall fictitious but suspenseful and realistic story. As expected given the nature of a political book, the plot is intriguing and many pivotal elements of the plot are based on more mature topics. However this novel is easy to read and the plot is not overly complicated nor reliant on the readers’ extensive knowledge of politics. Therefore this book is mostly aimed at readers of at least 14 years of age, especially those who have an interest in politics.

I enjoyed reading this book because of the fascinating and sometimes humorous parallels between the political environment described in the book and the modern world. By offering the reader a seemingly probable world, Chris Mullin puts forward a political warning and raises awareness about the dangers of the media throughout a novel that was, remarkably, written forty years ago. In my opinion the overarching motif that he is trying to put forward is that of democracy’s susceptibility to be influenced and undermined. Throughout Perkins’s tumultuous time in public office, the media, which is controlled by a few tycoons, works together with corrupt and self-interested officials to paint him extremely negatively. To make it worse he is not portrayed to be naive, but instead is shown as an honest person who means well and tries quite successfully to resist the onslaught until he could not. He seems to be in over his head and does not realise the depths of the ends that the civil service and institution are willing to go to take him down. 

Ray McAnally as Harry Perkins in Channel 4's BAFTA and Emmy award-winning adaptation of the novel

The deep levels of corruption from the few who control what people think in society would be terrifying if they were true. However Mullins, by merely raising the idea, is insinuating that perhaps it is the reality that the media and foreign countries can sway an entire country. In this case life has perhaps imitated art because the concept has become even more evident in recent years with the rise of social media and sensationalization. The media and more importantly their owners can now control what people think to their own ends even more than they did in A Very British Coup. For example, take the divisive but influential Fox News, which is a mouthpiece of Rupert Murdoch, or political candidates who are funded by shadowy superPACs to say what they want them to. Much of the marketing which attracted me to the book references Jeremy Corbyn and his 2016 attempt for Prime Ministership which has heavy parallels to the book. 

Another peculiar part of the book that I enjoyed was the prologue because it gives a larger context to the whole affair. It revealed to me that many of the things put forward in the book were actually true; for example, just as Perkins's premiership is undermined by the right wing press, a  Daily Telegraph article had written that the MI5 had investigated Corbyn and that he could not be trusted with the fate of Britain. Overall the book raises some serious questions which I found intriguing about whether democracies can be truly democratic and fair because of a few self-interested and wealthy individuals.

Chris Mullin

The shortcomings of this book are all contained in the less effective writing style. Firstly the book exists more in a narrative style, where there are no main characters to follow: instead, the point of view switches to accommodate the plot. Whilst this allows the reader to experience all of the events it crucially denies a large amount of character development especially for smaller characters, so they don’t come to life. Although this style of writing allows for elegant twists and fast paced manipulation the author fails to capitalise on this because of bland writing that does not do justice to the content. The ending of the book was also lacklustre and the writing lost momentum at the crucial point. These problems could be solved through some redrafting and altering of parts of the book that seem to drag on to make them more exciting and fleshed out. However all of the problems of the book are not underlying and don’t take away from the overall experience too much, so I would recommend this book to any reader, as long as they have interest in politics.

Channel 4's adaptation of A Very British Coup is available on All4 here.