A Very English Scandal

July 11, 2016
In 1979, Jeremy Thorpe, a popular member of Parliament, stood trial over claims that he hired an assassin to murder model Norman Scott, who claimed to be Thorpe’s ex-lover. In this addictive true crime account of one of Britain’s greatest political scandals, London-based novelist Preston (The Dig) chronicles Thorpe’s early, secretive love life, at a time when sodomy was still illegal, and his exposure. Thorpe is portrayed as repressed and concerned with his public image and political career; he involved colleagues in schemes lasting years to silence Scott. Though Scott had a cache of Thorpe’s incriminating letters as evidence, Thorpe always maintained that they were never lovers. Drawing from Scott’s memoir and documents from Peter Bessell, a political colleague of Thorpe’s with a checkered business past, Preston blends factual with farcical, recounting, for example, a horrifying incident with Thorpe’s helicopter and a protester standing too close to the rotor blade—a huge clump of hair seen on the ground turned out to be a muddy wig blown off. The trial near the end is riveting, with Thorpe’s lawyer demolishing Scott’s and Bessell’s credibility; Thorpe was acquitted. Preston caps off the dramatic account by discussing the widely held belief that the acquittal was an establishment cover-up, even though Thorpe never regained his career, and died in 2014. Though knee-deep in politics, scandal, and betrayal, the book also conveys the sobering, grim reality of lives destroyed by dirty politics and homophobic culture.

Preston (The Dig, 2016, etc.) revisits the 1970s scandal involving Jeremy Thorpe, Member of Parliament for North Devon and leader of Britain's Liberal Party.In what could be a juicy, salacious tale, the author chronicles what seems to have been a brief encounter dragged out over more than 20 years in the paranoid mind of the Parliamentarian and his pathetic victim. Thorpe met Norman Josiffe, a confused, mentally unstable young man, at Thorpe's "friend's" home, where Josiffe was working in the stables. Thorpe gave him his card and an invitation to turn to him if he ever had "problems with Van"--Brecht Van de Vater, Josiffe's employer. Soon, Norman went to Thorpe intending to return a collection of insurance letters Van de Vater had saved. For their first meeting, in 1961, Thorpe invited Josiffe to stay with him at his mother's house, where they began a short-lived affair. Josiffe's life comes across as a mess of mental institutions, prescription drug addiction, and constant attempts to recover his National Insurance health card. In England, employers pay the premium for the card; in Josiffe's case, responsibility lay first with Van de Vater and then Thorpe. Neither of them bothered to pay, and Josiffe's fragile mind and desperate economic situation drove him to desperation. Enter Thorpe's MP colleague, Peter Bessell, who stepped in to protect Thorpe by paying small sums to Josiffe. In Parliament, there is an unwritten law that a man's private life is his own business. Thus, Josiffe's accusations were swept under the table by everyone. Thorpe and Bessell, desperate for money for the party and themselves, found a savior in Jack Hayward, a Bahamas-based millionaire who provided them with cash. Still, Thorpe's paranoia about Josiffe grew, and he proposed a murder plot. It was an absurd plan, but apparently not absurd enough to throw the affair into the news and the courts. Indeed, many readers may wonder why it's necessary to revisit the whole episode now. A story of establishment and judicial misconduct that's no longer pertinent--or even interesting. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2016

In his narrative of the scandal that engulfed Great Britain's Houses of Parliament in the 1970s, Preston (The Dig) delivers an operatic account about hypocrisy, deceit, and betrayal at the heart of the government's establishment. The scandal centered on Jeremy Thorpe, a parliamentarian since 1959, who had been covering up a homosexual affair he had begun with Norman Scott in 1962. His relationship with Scott, an on-again, off-again riding instructor and model, took bizarre twists, involving fellow members of his party, lying, payoffs, embezzlement, and a murder plot. As leader of the Liberal Party, Thorpe was poised in 1974 to hold the balance of power in a coalition government headed by Edward Heath. Events climaxed in 1976 when Thorpe was tried for conspiracy to murder. Despite credible evidence to the contrary, Thorpe was acquitted through his attorney's discrediting the testimony of prosecution witnesses and the judge's extrajudicial interference favorable to the defense. Dominic Sandbrook's Seasons in the Sun provides an excellent context in which the events occurred. VERDICT This book, which is based on extensive interviews with principal players and reads like a thriller, is recommended for those with a penchant for 1970s British political culture.--Glen Edward Taul, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.