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Dominion
The Great Smog. London. 1952. A dense, choking fog engulfs the city and beneath it, history is re-written...
Spring 1940. The world is on the brink of the biggest war ever known. At a meeting at Downing Street, Britain's leaders decide who is to succeed the exhausted appeaser Chamberlain. But when Churchill is persuaded to serve under Halifax, history as we know it is turned on its head.
Winter 1952. Though war rages on in the east, Britain is at peace with Nazi Germany and many now see the country as little more than a corrupt German satellite state. The free press has been suspended, the streets are patrolled by violent auxiliary police, the British Jews face ever tighter constraints and there are dark, terrible rumours about what is happening in the basement of Senate House – held by the German Gestapo.
Meanwhile Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, recruited as a spy by Churchill's outlawed organisation Free Britain, must complete a mission of desperate importance. His old friend Frank Muncaster may have obtained top-secret information with striking ramifications. But David is not the only one looking for Frank, and soon the pair – along with their Free Britain allies, and David's terrified wife Sarah – will find themselves fugitives in their own country, fleeing not just for their lives, but for the very future itself.
774 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 25, 2012
About the author
C.J. Sansom
31 books3,970 followersChristopher John "C.J." Sansom was an English writer of crime novels.
Sansom was educated at the University of Birmingham, where he took a BA and then a PhD in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he decided to retrain as a solicitor. He practised for a while in Sussex as a lawyer for the disadvantaged, before quitting in order to work full-time as a writer.
He came to prominence with his series set in the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century, whose main character is the hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake. Shardlake works on commission, initially from Thomas Cromwell in Dissolution and Dark Fire and then Thomas Cranmer in Sovereign and Revelation.
He has also written Winter in Madrid, a thriller set in Spain in 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.
Dark Fire won the 2005 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, awarded by the Crime Writers' Association (CWA). Sansom himself was "Very Highly Commended" in the 2007 CWA Dagger in the Library award, for the Shardlake series.
The television series "Shardlake" was adapted from the books and released by Disney+ on 1st May 2024, just 4 days after Samson's death.
(from Wikipedia®)
Sansom was educated at the University of Birmingham, where he took a BA and then a PhD in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he decided to retrain as a solicitor. He practised for a while in Sussex as a lawyer for the disadvantaged, before quitting in order to work full-time as a writer.
He came to prominence with his series set in the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century, whose main character is the hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake. Shardlake works on commission, initially from Thomas Cromwell in Dissolution and Dark Fire and then Thomas Cranmer in Sovereign and Revelation.
He has also written Winter in Madrid, a thriller set in Spain in 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.
Dark Fire won the 2005 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, awarded by the Crime Writers' Association (CWA). Sansom himself was "Very Highly Commended" in the 2007 CWA Dagger in the Library award, for the Shardlake series.
The television series "Shardlake" was adapted from the books and released by Disney+ on 1st May 2024, just 4 days after Samson's death.
(from Wikipedia®)
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February 5, 2014Great alternate-history novel. The Nazis win, occupy Britain. Check it out.
January 28, 2013
Here are the facts. The year is 1952. In the east the German war with Russia, now eleven years old, shows no sign of ending. On a line roughly extending from Lake Ladoga in the north-west to the Caspian Sea in the south-east, the struggle is in stalemate, a contest punctuated by blows and counter blows which settle nothing.
In the west Britain, having made peace with Germany after the brief war of 1939-40, is governed by a crypto-fascist regime headed by Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, the press magnate. Oswald Mosley, whose fascist party made substantial gains in the rigged parliamentary election of 1950, is Home Secretary, in charge of the normal police and black-shirt recruited auxiliaries. Enoch Powell is Secretary of State for India, where Britain is still fighting a rearguard action to retain the Jewel in the tawdry Crown. Under the Treaty of Berlin, which ended the western war, the Isle of Wight has been turned over to Germany as a base.
In Berlin, Hitler, suffering from increasingly acute Parkinson’s disease, is nearing the end. The future is uncertain, with no clear succession. There are those who want to end the hopeless war in the east; there are those, chiefly in the SS, who want to carry on the struggle against the Slav ‘sub-humans’ until that elusive final victory.
We are, of course, in past futures, a foreign country which did things differently; we are in the country of C. J. Sansom’s Dominion, a ‘what if’ novel along the lines of Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle, Len Deighton’s SS GB and Robert Harris’ Fatherland.
The premise is a plausible one. The novel opens with a real historical scene, the meeting in the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street on 9 May, 1940. Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, has announced his intention to resign, discredited by Britain’s disastrous campaign against the Germans in Norway. The contenders are Halifax and Churchill. Halifax, the Foreign Minister and a noted appeaser, is favoured by Chamberlain, the King and most of the Tory Party. In real history he demurs. In this history he does not. After the German invasion of the West, and the disaster of Dunkirk, Halifax makes peace, entering into a treaty of friendship with Britain’s former enemy. Churchill withdraws, eventually to lead a Resistance movement against the new Vichy-style regime, headed in succession by Halifax, David Lloyd George and finally Beaverbrook.
Dominion is the first book that I’ve read by C. J. Sansom, though I’m told that he is well-respected for his Shardlake series, historical novels set in Tudor England. He has a doctorate in history; so, if that’s any measure, he is qualified enough to treat the subject with imaginative insight and a high degree of verisimilitude and empathy. Does he? Well, now, that’s the key question. At the risk of trying your patience I’m going to begin this review by looking at the justification for the premises contained in the novel, set out in a Historical Note at the very end.
Actually, if you are at all interested in the context, I would suggest that you begin at the end. It’s the key to all that goes before. It shows the author as a man with a mission. He has, in other words, a political intent; his novel is not merely for shallow entertainment. Rather it has a didactic purpose, namely to warn you against the dangers of nationalism and fascism in the real historical present by showing you nationalism and fascism in a fictitious historical past.
I suppose that this book might be compared, at least superficially, with It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel warning of the dangers of fascism in America. It could have happened here, that’s Sansom’s point. But could it have happened in the way he describes in Dominion?
You see, what he gives us is an Anglo-Saxon version of Petain and Laval’s Vichy state. It’s really all based on a shallow idiocy of perspective, if I can put it like that. George Orwell, who also feared a form of fascism in England, was altogether more subtle than the inept Mister Sansom, at pains to advance his left-wing credentials. “What sickens me about left-wing people, especially left wing intellectuals”, Orwell wrote, “is their utter ignorance of the way things actually happen.”
My own doubts were raised early. Beaverbrook, in real history, was a close friend of Churchill and an effective minister in his wartime cabinet. In Dominion this same Beaverbrook is a man prepared to hand over Britain’s Jewish community to the Nazis. In justifying his portrayal, Samson quotes Clement Atlee, the post-war Labour prime minister, who said that the press baron was the most evil person he had ever met. Really? Is this the same Beaverbrook that Michael Foot, a former Labour leader and respected leftwing journalist, describes with such warmth and affection in his essay collection Debts of Honour?
Then there is Enoch Powell, the bête noir of Samson and his kind. His real credentials were impeccably anti-fascist, an opponent of appeasement and a man who returned to England from a comfortable academic position in Australia specifically to fight against the Nazis. The idea of him collaborating with Oswald Mosley is laughably absurd. Samson has simply advanced beyond his fictitious present to a real future, to Powell’s 1960s warning over the possible effects of mass immigration. He has then projected back again; for, as we all know, concerns about immigration equals fascism.
Powell, who only entered Parliament in 1950, was an admirer of British rule in India, that much is true, but by the early 1950s his imperial convictions were weakening. The depiction of him in Dominion is, quite frankly, childishly inexact. By Sansom’s measure Churchill might just as readily have been Secretary of State for India in a Beaverbrook cabinet, given his own past political commitments, his past refusal to countenance any form of independence for India.
So, what is there to say about Samson’s imagined Britain? It’s a drab place, economically depressed, a country in debt, a country that is no more than a satellite of a Continental superpower, a country where independence is all but a fiction, a country with an uncertain future. This is Vichy Britain, the only model the author seems to understand, a country whose cowardly leaders are prepared to hand over some of its citizens to an uncertain fate.
But Vichy was not the only model to hand. In real history there was Finland, an ally of Germany in the war against Russia, but one that preserved its democratic polity and refused to play any part in the Holocaust. Then there is Denmark, the ‘model’ protectorate, a country occupied by the Germans but one that still managed to undermine Nazi policy towards the Jews.
It’s perfectly true, in a world of limitless possibilities, that Samson’s alternate is just as valid as any other alternate, but does it stand up to scrutiny? My alternate is that if Britain had exited the war in 1940, instead of 1945, it would not have accumulated the massive debts, particularly to America, that so crippled its post-war economic performance.
Even in Sansom’s world the country would surely have done much better. There is no objective reason why it should have been so poor. Although allied to Germany, it was not involved in the war with Russia. Why on earth would the Germans have erected tariff barriers against British produce when such produce, particularly in armaments, would have been vital for the continuing campaign in the east? Sansom’s model makes no logical sense.
The truth is that Sansom’s depiction of a sad, indebted, economically and politically dependant nation is far closer to our contemporary political realities; a grubby Britain, a country increasingly uncertain of itself, a country falling to bits, a country tied to the European Union, an organisation the author clearly approves of.
The Historical Note, incidentally, which starts off objectively enough, ends up as a carpet-chewing rant against nationalism in general and – would you believe it? – Scottish nationalism in particular! Nationalism and patriotism, in Sansom’s view, are close kin to fascism. We are back in the mental world of those 1930s intellectuals who, when it came to understanding fascism, understood exactly nothing
I’ve tried your patience too far. The historical stuff may be of no interest at all to you. You have one question only: what of the novel, what of the story; is it any good? Yes, well, it is in part, now and again a bit of a page turner. Ignore the political manipulation – unfortunately I can’t - and you might actually enjoy it. The problem is that it is overlong and repetitive. More than that, the whole superstructure rests on an astonishingly weak base. The core plot device, the heart of the story, is as weak as marshmallow.
It centres on one Frank Muncaster, a geologist, who has learned a ‘dreadful secret’ that turns out to be no secret at all. I’m not going to tell you what the ‘dreadful secret’ is, simply that the Germans are anxious to find out, though what earthly good it could have done them is anybody’s guess. Muncaster learns his ‘dreadful secret’ from his physicist brother, who happens to be working with the Americans. In the contretemps that follows, the said brother is pushed out of the window of Muncaster’s flat, while he proceeds to wreck the place (why?), all the time shouting about the end of the world.
It turns out that Muncaster is the sort of fellow that a goose would say boo to, so his actions, to say the least, are just a tad out of character. But on his hissy fit all else follows; the Gestapo follow, the British fascist police follow, the British resistance follow; Churchill himself follows. Quick, let’s find Frank; our war in Russia depends on his ‘dreadful secret.’ Quick, let’s find Frank; let’s discover the ‘dreadful secret’ or get him away safely to America.
I’m really trying not to laugh as I write this, but there is so much in Dominion that is laughable; the lost and found chase through a thick London fog, Keystone Cops-style, is particularly funny. Poor Muncaster, freed from a loony bin, is aided by an assortment of individuals – David Fitzgerald, a civil servant and member of the resistance who befriended the forlorn chap (oh, just how many times do we heed to be reminded of his rictus smile?!) while they were at Oxford together. He is aided by Ben, a nurse at a lunatic asylum and a homosexual Scottish communist, also a member of the resistance, ye ken. He is aided by, of all organisations, the Fire Brigade, an organisation with impeccable left-wing credentials, which rides to the rescue through the fog!
And so it goes on, from high tension to low comedy, a series of increasingly implausible encounters. The scene on the beach below Rottingdean on the Suffolk coast takes verisimilitude to the Senate House, the SS headquarters in London, and tortures it out of existence. In the end Frank takes himself and the ‘dreadful secret’ into oblivion, an action, if taken earlier, that would have saved several hundred wearisome pages.
As a novel Dominion is real boys’ own stuff, difficult even for boys to swallow. In almost 570 pages of text the only believable character, the only character with any real human depth, is the world-weary Gunther Hoth, the Gestapo agent on Muncaster’s tail. There would seem to me to be a spot of plagiarism here, for he is simply a more ideologically committed dimension of Xavier March, the detective from Robert Harris’ Fatherland.
Dominion is based on a bogus historical premise; it’s based on the character assassination of real people. As a novel it’s too long, it’s repetitive, the characterisations are weak, the encounters unbelievable, the narrative plodding, as thick at point as the London fog and the fog in the author’s mind.
Samson does not write badly; he just doesn’t write very well. If he were not already Mister Shardlake I am convinced that this book would have gathered rejection slips rather than accolades from the likes of the Guardian and the Independent. Quite frankly, it’s a shallow and immature book, no more than a vehicle for the writer’s political prejudices. If you like alternate history and political thrillers go to Fatherland instead. It’s infinitely superior.
In the west Britain, having made peace with Germany after the brief war of 1939-40, is governed by a crypto-fascist regime headed by Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, the press magnate. Oswald Mosley, whose fascist party made substantial gains in the rigged parliamentary election of 1950, is Home Secretary, in charge of the normal police and black-shirt recruited auxiliaries. Enoch Powell is Secretary of State for India, where Britain is still fighting a rearguard action to retain the Jewel in the tawdry Crown. Under the Treaty of Berlin, which ended the western war, the Isle of Wight has been turned over to Germany as a base.
In Berlin, Hitler, suffering from increasingly acute Parkinson’s disease, is nearing the end. The future is uncertain, with no clear succession. There are those who want to end the hopeless war in the east; there are those, chiefly in the SS, who want to carry on the struggle against the Slav ‘sub-humans’ until that elusive final victory.
We are, of course, in past futures, a foreign country which did things differently; we are in the country of C. J. Sansom’s Dominion, a ‘what if’ novel along the lines of Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle, Len Deighton’s SS GB and Robert Harris’ Fatherland.
The premise is a plausible one. The novel opens with a real historical scene, the meeting in the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street on 9 May, 1940. Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, has announced his intention to resign, discredited by Britain’s disastrous campaign against the Germans in Norway. The contenders are Halifax and Churchill. Halifax, the Foreign Minister and a noted appeaser, is favoured by Chamberlain, the King and most of the Tory Party. In real history he demurs. In this history he does not. After the German invasion of the West, and the disaster of Dunkirk, Halifax makes peace, entering into a treaty of friendship with Britain’s former enemy. Churchill withdraws, eventually to lead a Resistance movement against the new Vichy-style regime, headed in succession by Halifax, David Lloyd George and finally Beaverbrook.
Dominion is the first book that I’ve read by C. J. Sansom, though I’m told that he is well-respected for his Shardlake series, historical novels set in Tudor England. He has a doctorate in history; so, if that’s any measure, he is qualified enough to treat the subject with imaginative insight and a high degree of verisimilitude and empathy. Does he? Well, now, that’s the key question. At the risk of trying your patience I’m going to begin this review by looking at the justification for the premises contained in the novel, set out in a Historical Note at the very end.
Actually, if you are at all interested in the context, I would suggest that you begin at the end. It’s the key to all that goes before. It shows the author as a man with a mission. He has, in other words, a political intent; his novel is not merely for shallow entertainment. Rather it has a didactic purpose, namely to warn you against the dangers of nationalism and fascism in the real historical present by showing you nationalism and fascism in a fictitious historical past.
I suppose that this book might be compared, at least superficially, with It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel warning of the dangers of fascism in America. It could have happened here, that’s Sansom’s point. But could it have happened in the way he describes in Dominion?
You see, what he gives us is an Anglo-Saxon version of Petain and Laval’s Vichy state. It’s really all based on a shallow idiocy of perspective, if I can put it like that. George Orwell, who also feared a form of fascism in England, was altogether more subtle than the inept Mister Sansom, at pains to advance his left-wing credentials. “What sickens me about left-wing people, especially left wing intellectuals”, Orwell wrote, “is their utter ignorance of the way things actually happen.”
My own doubts were raised early. Beaverbrook, in real history, was a close friend of Churchill and an effective minister in his wartime cabinet. In Dominion this same Beaverbrook is a man prepared to hand over Britain’s Jewish community to the Nazis. In justifying his portrayal, Samson quotes Clement Atlee, the post-war Labour prime minister, who said that the press baron was the most evil person he had ever met. Really? Is this the same Beaverbrook that Michael Foot, a former Labour leader and respected leftwing journalist, describes with such warmth and affection in his essay collection Debts of Honour?
Then there is Enoch Powell, the bête noir of Samson and his kind. His real credentials were impeccably anti-fascist, an opponent of appeasement and a man who returned to England from a comfortable academic position in Australia specifically to fight against the Nazis. The idea of him collaborating with Oswald Mosley is laughably absurd. Samson has simply advanced beyond his fictitious present to a real future, to Powell’s 1960s warning over the possible effects of mass immigration. He has then projected back again; for, as we all know, concerns about immigration equals fascism.
Powell, who only entered Parliament in 1950, was an admirer of British rule in India, that much is true, but by the early 1950s his imperial convictions were weakening. The depiction of him in Dominion is, quite frankly, childishly inexact. By Sansom’s measure Churchill might just as readily have been Secretary of State for India in a Beaverbrook cabinet, given his own past political commitments, his past refusal to countenance any form of independence for India.
So, what is there to say about Samson’s imagined Britain? It’s a drab place, economically depressed, a country in debt, a country that is no more than a satellite of a Continental superpower, a country where independence is all but a fiction, a country with an uncertain future. This is Vichy Britain, the only model the author seems to understand, a country whose cowardly leaders are prepared to hand over some of its citizens to an uncertain fate.
But Vichy was not the only model to hand. In real history there was Finland, an ally of Germany in the war against Russia, but one that preserved its democratic polity and refused to play any part in the Holocaust. Then there is Denmark, the ‘model’ protectorate, a country occupied by the Germans but one that still managed to undermine Nazi policy towards the Jews.
It’s perfectly true, in a world of limitless possibilities, that Samson’s alternate is just as valid as any other alternate, but does it stand up to scrutiny? My alternate is that if Britain had exited the war in 1940, instead of 1945, it would not have accumulated the massive debts, particularly to America, that so crippled its post-war economic performance.
Even in Sansom’s world the country would surely have done much better. There is no objective reason why it should have been so poor. Although allied to Germany, it was not involved in the war with Russia. Why on earth would the Germans have erected tariff barriers against British produce when such produce, particularly in armaments, would have been vital for the continuing campaign in the east? Sansom’s model makes no logical sense.
The truth is that Sansom’s depiction of a sad, indebted, economically and politically dependant nation is far closer to our contemporary political realities; a grubby Britain, a country increasingly uncertain of itself, a country falling to bits, a country tied to the European Union, an organisation the author clearly approves of.
The Historical Note, incidentally, which starts off objectively enough, ends up as a carpet-chewing rant against nationalism in general and – would you believe it? – Scottish nationalism in particular! Nationalism and patriotism, in Sansom’s view, are close kin to fascism. We are back in the mental world of those 1930s intellectuals who, when it came to understanding fascism, understood exactly nothing
I’ve tried your patience too far. The historical stuff may be of no interest at all to you. You have one question only: what of the novel, what of the story; is it any good? Yes, well, it is in part, now and again a bit of a page turner. Ignore the political manipulation – unfortunately I can’t - and you might actually enjoy it. The problem is that it is overlong and repetitive. More than that, the whole superstructure rests on an astonishingly weak base. The core plot device, the heart of the story, is as weak as marshmallow.
It centres on one Frank Muncaster, a geologist, who has learned a ‘dreadful secret’ that turns out to be no secret at all. I’m not going to tell you what the ‘dreadful secret’ is, simply that the Germans are anxious to find out, though what earthly good it could have done them is anybody’s guess. Muncaster learns his ‘dreadful secret’ from his physicist brother, who happens to be working with the Americans. In the contretemps that follows, the said brother is pushed out of the window of Muncaster’s flat, while he proceeds to wreck the place (why?), all the time shouting about the end of the world.
It turns out that Muncaster is the sort of fellow that a goose would say boo to, so his actions, to say the least, are just a tad out of character. But on his hissy fit all else follows; the Gestapo follow, the British fascist police follow, the British resistance follow; Churchill himself follows. Quick, let’s find Frank; our war in Russia depends on his ‘dreadful secret.’ Quick, let’s find Frank; let’s discover the ‘dreadful secret’ or get him away safely to America.
I’m really trying not to laugh as I write this, but there is so much in Dominion that is laughable; the lost and found chase through a thick London fog, Keystone Cops-style, is particularly funny. Poor Muncaster, freed from a loony bin, is aided by an assortment of individuals – David Fitzgerald, a civil servant and member of the resistance who befriended the forlorn chap (oh, just how many times do we heed to be reminded of his rictus smile?!) while they were at Oxford together. He is aided by Ben, a nurse at a lunatic asylum and a homosexual Scottish communist, also a member of the resistance, ye ken. He is aided by, of all organisations, the Fire Brigade, an organisation with impeccable left-wing credentials, which rides to the rescue through the fog!
And so it goes on, from high tension to low comedy, a series of increasingly implausible encounters. The scene on the beach below Rottingdean on the Suffolk coast takes verisimilitude to the Senate House, the SS headquarters in London, and tortures it out of existence. In the end Frank takes himself and the ‘dreadful secret’ into oblivion, an action, if taken earlier, that would have saved several hundred wearisome pages.
As a novel Dominion is real boys’ own stuff, difficult even for boys to swallow. In almost 570 pages of text the only believable character, the only character with any real human depth, is the world-weary Gunther Hoth, the Gestapo agent on Muncaster’s tail. There would seem to me to be a spot of plagiarism here, for he is simply a more ideologically committed dimension of Xavier March, the detective from Robert Harris’ Fatherland.
Dominion is based on a bogus historical premise; it’s based on the character assassination of real people. As a novel it’s too long, it’s repetitive, the characterisations are weak, the encounters unbelievable, the narrative plodding, as thick at point as the London fog and the fog in the author’s mind.
Samson does not write badly; he just doesn’t write very well. If he were not already Mister Shardlake I am convinced that this book would have gathered rejection slips rather than accolades from the likes of the Guardian and the Independent. Quite frankly, it’s a shallow and immature book, no more than a vehicle for the writer’s political prejudices. If you like alternate history and political thrillers go to Fatherland instead. It’s infinitely superior.
January 11, 2013
I was really surprised how poor this book was. I've given it two stars, but feel the second is probably a bit generous.
I have read CJ Sansom's Shardlake series, and loved them. I've also read his other non-Shardlake book, Winter in Madrid, and thought it was excellent. I have four major issues with this book, though.
Firstly, the story is not only told at such a plodding, dull pace, it is also not actually a particularly enthralling one in the first place. The idea of a Nazi puppet state Britain following a peace settlement in 1940 is an interesting background for a book, but Sansom really didn't exploit it.
We're supposed to believe that the reason Frank Muncaster is being hunted is because, in the course of a relatively short conversation with his brother, he learned so much about the US atomic weapons program that, were it to fall into Germans hands, it would advance their nuclear effort several years. Really? He's a geologist, not a nuclear scientist.
Secondly, there is next to no subtlety. You do not have to read between the lines to fish out the meaning of what is going on at any point in the book, it is all made so blatantly obvious. The Germans for example, are all comic book Nazis.
Here's an example. One SS man asks another one, what will happen to the British jews after they'd been rounded up, and the answer is "They'll be sent to the Isle of Wight, then sent out east. Hopefully soon. Arrangements are being made for their reception in Poland. Getting the Auschwitz ovens up to full capacity".
The reader isn't stupid, he doesn't need that final sentence, it's just too obvious, totally unnecessary. It happens throughout the book and just cartoonifies the whole thing.
Thirdly, the portrayal of the resistance is barely credible. I've not read many books about resistance organisations, but I'd have thought that one of the cardinal rules was that people knew only as much as they needed to know, and nothing more. In fact, at one point in the book, one of the resistance members actually says this. So why isn't it the case with the resistance in this book?
Here's one of many examples. Having sprung their man from a mental institution in Birmingham, made their way through the hands of several different cells as they travel down to the south coast, the resistance man sheltering them in Brighton says to one of the group, "I hear he was in a mental institution". What kind of resistance organisation is this, that a bloke who runs a B&B at the other end of the country knows an intimate detail of a case so important that the protagonists get an audience with Winston Churchill?
My fourth major problem was with the ending. It read to me very much like the author didn't really know how he was going to end it until he started writing the last chapter. It felt like it had been bodged together at the last moment. What's more, the 20 pages or so building up to it were incredibly dull, there was no tension as things unfolded at all, and the ultimate endgame was just a sequence of somewhat hard to believe events, with an ending which just felt totally random.
In the end, I was glad I'd finally finished it, which is not something I've ever felt with this writer's work before, which is what makes it all the more disappointing.
I have read CJ Sansom's Shardlake series, and loved them. I've also read his other non-Shardlake book, Winter in Madrid, and thought it was excellent. I have four major issues with this book, though.
Firstly, the story is not only told at such a plodding, dull pace, it is also not actually a particularly enthralling one in the first place. The idea of a Nazi puppet state Britain following a peace settlement in 1940 is an interesting background for a book, but Sansom really didn't exploit it.
We're supposed to believe that the reason Frank Muncaster is being hunted is because, in the course of a relatively short conversation with his brother, he learned so much about the US atomic weapons program that, were it to fall into Germans hands, it would advance their nuclear effort several years. Really? He's a geologist, not a nuclear scientist.
Secondly, there is next to no subtlety. You do not have to read between the lines to fish out the meaning of what is going on at any point in the book, it is all made so blatantly obvious. The Germans for example, are all comic book Nazis.
Here's an example. One SS man asks another one, what will happen to the British jews after they'd been rounded up, and the answer is "They'll be sent to the Isle of Wight, then sent out east. Hopefully soon. Arrangements are being made for their reception in Poland. Getting the Auschwitz ovens up to full capacity".
The reader isn't stupid, he doesn't need that final sentence, it's just too obvious, totally unnecessary. It happens throughout the book and just cartoonifies the whole thing.
Thirdly, the portrayal of the resistance is barely credible. I've not read many books about resistance organisations, but I'd have thought that one of the cardinal rules was that people knew only as much as they needed to know, and nothing more. In fact, at one point in the book, one of the resistance members actually says this. So why isn't it the case with the resistance in this book?
Here's one of many examples. Having sprung their man from a mental institution in Birmingham, made their way through the hands of several different cells as they travel down to the south coast, the resistance man sheltering them in Brighton says to one of the group, "I hear he was in a mental institution". What kind of resistance organisation is this, that a bloke who runs a B&B at the other end of the country knows an intimate detail of a case so important that the protagonists get an audience with Winston Churchill?
My fourth major problem was with the ending. It read to me very much like the author didn't really know how he was going to end it until he started writing the last chapter. It felt like it had been bodged together at the last moment. What's more, the 20 pages or so building up to it were incredibly dull, there was no tension as things unfolded at all, and the ultimate endgame was just a sequence of somewhat hard to believe events, with an ending which just felt totally random.
In the end, I was glad I'd finally finished it, which is not something I've ever felt with this writer's work before, which is what makes it all the more disappointing.
January 19, 2024
Who hasn’t thought about the what ifs. What if I had gone to a different college? Married a different person? Entered a different profession? C. J. Sansom’s 2012 political thriller is a what if of a much greater scope. What if Great Britain was defeated by Nazi Germany?
Dominion is a reimagining of how WWII ends. (The alternative fiction of that time period is not new, just new to me). It is set in 1952, twelve years after Britain surrenders to Germany and becomes a satellite state of the Third Reich. Churchill goes underground as the leader of the resistance. There are women and men willing to risk their lives for what they believe in, but also Nazi sympathizers, some with important government positions, well-known names such as Enoch Powell, Lords Halifax and Beaverbrook.
Sansom is a historian and meticulous about facts. How many novels have extensive bibliographies? I have not read many political thrillers, but this genre is a nice change of pace, especially when you know you will learn something that is new and valid. One suspenseful chase between a resistance spy and a Nazi occurs during the Great Smog of London in 1952, something I had been unaware of. I have read five of Sansom’s Mathew Shardlake series set in 16th century England and Winter in Madrid set in 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. All attest to the fact that this is an author the reader can depend on to give historical accuracy as well as tell a great story.
In this day of political turmoil the what if question still looms in the mind of many. For me, it is as frightening today as it was in the imagined scenario of Dominion.
November 8, 2012
A tough and powerful word, but an appropriate title for C J Sansom’s new book. Famous for his Shardlake Tudor series, here Sansom brings us to 1952 in an alternate, authoritarian Britain which made peace with Hitler in 1940. Not formally occupied, Britain is nevertheless dominated by the Nazi regime. Its home-grown “milice” – a vastly expanded and violent Special Branch working hand-in-hand with the Gestapo dispensing brutality from the basement of the German Embassy at Senate House – patrols the dismal and dirty streets.
Germany is still fighting a bitter, savage war against Russia, the British press, radio and television are filled with propaganda and British Jews face ever greater constraints.
The hero, David Fitzgerald, is a civil servant hiding his Jewishness and trying to preserve his marriage which is collapsing under the pressure of his secret life as a spy for the Resistance. The antagonist, Gunther Hoth, a Gestapo policeman hunting Fitzgerald and his Resistance colleagues, is neither stupid nor inexperienced and almost becomes a sympathetic character. This is no “Dick Barton” adventure with clear-cut lines.
Dense with detail that makes its portrayal of everyday life so vivid, the action starts slowly, but by the end, the tension is almost unbearable. Real events like Great Smog of 1952 are woven it to ramp up the threatening atmosphere and clever details about the alternate1950s are grafted on to real ones, such as British Corner Houses replacing Lyons Corner Houses (Joe Lyons was, of course, Jewish).
The characters are beautifully, often painfully, drawn and fleshed out with past histories full of awkward relations, tiresome colleagues, happy and painful childhoods. Complex, sometimes very frightened, the characters are always human. Their dialogue mirrors this as well as driving the story forward.
Although interacting with the characters’ story, the overarching political plot does not reply upon their actions. The seeming important secret is of negative importance. In one way, this is unsatisfactory, in another it emphasises how the actions of ordinary people do not impact or contribute to the bigger one. In this book, that would have been too pat.
Part adventure, part espionage, all encompassed by terrific atmosphere, this is an exciting, but moving account of people who become heroic but remain very human.
Germany is still fighting a bitter, savage war against Russia, the British press, radio and television are filled with propaganda and British Jews face ever greater constraints.
The hero, David Fitzgerald, is a civil servant hiding his Jewishness and trying to preserve his marriage which is collapsing under the pressure of his secret life as a spy for the Resistance. The antagonist, Gunther Hoth, a Gestapo policeman hunting Fitzgerald and his Resistance colleagues, is neither stupid nor inexperienced and almost becomes a sympathetic character. This is no “Dick Barton” adventure with clear-cut lines.
Dense with detail that makes its portrayal of everyday life so vivid, the action starts slowly, but by the end, the tension is almost unbearable. Real events like Great Smog of 1952 are woven it to ramp up the threatening atmosphere and clever details about the alternate1950s are grafted on to real ones, such as British Corner Houses replacing Lyons Corner Houses (Joe Lyons was, of course, Jewish).
The characters are beautifully, often painfully, drawn and fleshed out with past histories full of awkward relations, tiresome colleagues, happy and painful childhoods. Complex, sometimes very frightened, the characters are always human. Their dialogue mirrors this as well as driving the story forward.
Although interacting with the characters’ story, the overarching political plot does not reply upon their actions. The seeming important secret is of negative importance. In one way, this is unsatisfactory, in another it emphasises how the actions of ordinary people do not impact or contribute to the bigger one. In this book, that would have been too pat.
Part adventure, part espionage, all encompassed by terrific atmosphere, this is an exciting, but moving account of people who become heroic but remain very human.
June 29, 2023
Unusually for me I started reading CJ Sansom with his first book - ‘Winter in Madrid.’ Now I finish with his last book ‘Dominion.’ In between I managed to finish his Shardlake series. All the books have been excellent..
Like ‘Fatherland,’ ‘SS-GB, ‘ Man in the High Castle,’ and many other books we are set in an alternate reality. Britain has surrendered to Nazi Germany just before in the real world Churchill becomes PM.
David Fitzgerald, a civil servant, becomes involved with the resistance. He conceals this secret from his wife, as well as the fact that he is half Jewish. He has to help an old University chum with a great secret escape the Nazi’s.
Whilst I found the first third of the 600+ page novel slow, it kicks off with Fitzgerald ‘s exposure as an agent and then romps along to the finish.
At the end there is an interesting bibliography. Sansom also nails his colours to the mast about the sadness of the descent into Brexit ( I share his views).
I am saddened that due to the Author’s health this may be the last book he publishes. But he has left a great legacy in just a relatively few thousand pages.
Ps the storyline in ‘Dominion’ also makes me ensure the Grandchildren stair gates are safely secured at all times.
Like ‘Fatherland,’ ‘SS-GB, ‘ Man in the High Castle,’ and many other books we are set in an alternate reality. Britain has surrendered to Nazi Germany just before in the real world Churchill becomes PM.
David Fitzgerald, a civil servant, becomes involved with the resistance. He conceals this secret from his wife, as well as the fact that he is half Jewish. He has to help an old University chum with a great secret escape the Nazi’s.
Whilst I found the first third of the 600+ page novel slow, it kicks off with Fitzgerald ‘s exposure as an agent and then romps along to the finish.
At the end there is an interesting bibliography. Sansom also nails his colours to the mast about the sadness of the descent into Brexit ( I share his views).
I am saddened that due to the Author’s health this may be the last book he publishes. But he has left a great legacy in just a relatively few thousand pages.
Ps the storyline in ‘Dominion’ also makes me ensure the Grandchildren stair gates are safely secured at all times.
January 17, 2021
It's the first time I've read alternate history (I think). It's an interesting concept, more so because of the information at the end. It made me understand the story better. C.J. Sansom is one of my favourite authors, but I will always like his Shardlake series best.
November 18, 2013
"Adverbs can kill a novel", David said quietly. "Yes," Natalia answered heavily. "I agree," Frank observed thoughtfully while smiling sadly. Aaaargh! It's a terrible trap - but the dreadful excessive adverbiage slashes hard at the throat of this book from prolific writer CJ Sansom, draining the lifeblood out of a novel with a fascinating "alternate history" premise.
Counter-factuals are all the rage these days, even creeping into genuine historical accounts: I recently read a (factual) book on the Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis where he slipped a limited Nuclear attack by the USA on North Korea in 1951 into the start of one chapter, only to tell the reader two pages later that it had been a "what if". That one annoyed me (I was even stupid enough to search on the internet - before reaching Gaddis' "reveal" - to check whether such an attack had in fact taken place) but Sansom's seems at first to be more intriguing: in the opening pages we learn that in May 1940, it is not Churchill who becomes Prime Minister; it's Halifax, an appeaser who comes to terms with the Nazis. A dozen years later in 1952, it is Beaverbrook who is PM of a British Client state of Nazi Germany whose own leader, an ailing Hitler, is still battling with the Russians on the Eastern Front. That is the back story; the front story contains a spy narrative weaved around nuclear secrets, a Resistance love story and an internecine feud within the ruling Nazi-friendly British Government.
There is no doubt that Sansom has done his research as a voluminous "Autobiographical note" containing all the books which have influenced the final novel shows. As a result there are plenty of moments when the 1952 setting is made believable - the details are well rendered. But it is the writing that lets the book down. Historical backfill is forced into dialogue through unlikely questions; authorial interventions pop into descriptions like a director peeping round the edge of a stage curtain saying "And now Ophelia is feeling sad and is going to drown herself"... Perhaps this is an inevitable consequence of having to fill in the counter-factual historical gaps over such a huge period as 12 years. But the adverbs??? Not so forgiveable.
I can only think that, after all the research, the actual writing of this novel was rushed - which is a great pity. It is a tremendous achievement at 700 pages, and it may be that the reference to Sansom's bone marrow cancer in the note at the end of the book did indeed lead to a sense of urgency in the writing. But, having read Sansom's earlier brilliant "Winter in Madrid" (as well as one of his renowned Shardlake books) I expected a better book - more gripping, more taut, more thrilling, and certainly better written.
One more gripe: the last 18 pages of the book are taken up with a historical note, which seeks to explain his counter-factual view. For fourteen pages, he does this relatively well - but the final four pages are (somewhat bizarrely) taken up with a diatribe against the SNP and dismissing even the possibility that an independent future for Scotland could be anything other than a deeply retrograde step. In a novel which imagines a Nazi-dominated Britain in 1952, it is quite clear that Sansom is positing that Scotland's future might be dark and twisted. This seems to me ridiculously negative and a facile interpretation of national identity in general. it is also typical of the terrible "fear-uncertainty-and-doubt" that those opposed to Scotland existing as an independent Nation State are currently peddling. This all seemed unnecessary.
In summary, this is a book that frustrated me. It's well-conceived and enjoyable enough, but for me - and I accept this is personal preference - it fell down in a number of areas.
Final analysis: if you like counter-factuals, you'll love "Dominion".
Counter-factuals are all the rage these days, even creeping into genuine historical accounts: I recently read a (factual) book on the Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis where he slipped a limited Nuclear attack by the USA on North Korea in 1951 into the start of one chapter, only to tell the reader two pages later that it had been a "what if". That one annoyed me (I was even stupid enough to search on the internet - before reaching Gaddis' "reveal" - to check whether such an attack had in fact taken place) but Sansom's seems at first to be more intriguing: in the opening pages we learn that in May 1940, it is not Churchill who becomes Prime Minister; it's Halifax, an appeaser who comes to terms with the Nazis. A dozen years later in 1952, it is Beaverbrook who is PM of a British Client state of Nazi Germany whose own leader, an ailing Hitler, is still battling with the Russians on the Eastern Front. That is the back story; the front story contains a spy narrative weaved around nuclear secrets, a Resistance love story and an internecine feud within the ruling Nazi-friendly British Government.
There is no doubt that Sansom has done his research as a voluminous "Autobiographical note" containing all the books which have influenced the final novel shows. As a result there are plenty of moments when the 1952 setting is made believable - the details are well rendered. But it is the writing that lets the book down. Historical backfill is forced into dialogue through unlikely questions; authorial interventions pop into descriptions like a director peeping round the edge of a stage curtain saying "And now Ophelia is feeling sad and is going to drown herself"... Perhaps this is an inevitable consequence of having to fill in the counter-factual historical gaps over such a huge period as 12 years. But the adverbs??? Not so forgiveable.
I can only think that, after all the research, the actual writing of this novel was rushed - which is a great pity. It is a tremendous achievement at 700 pages, and it may be that the reference to Sansom's bone marrow cancer in the note at the end of the book did indeed lead to a sense of urgency in the writing. But, having read Sansom's earlier brilliant "Winter in Madrid" (as well as one of his renowned Shardlake books) I expected a better book - more gripping, more taut, more thrilling, and certainly better written.
One more gripe: the last 18 pages of the book are taken up with a historical note, which seeks to explain his counter-factual view. For fourteen pages, he does this relatively well - but the final four pages are (somewhat bizarrely) taken up with a diatribe against the SNP and dismissing even the possibility that an independent future for Scotland could be anything other than a deeply retrograde step. In a novel which imagines a Nazi-dominated Britain in 1952, it is quite clear that Sansom is positing that Scotland's future might be dark and twisted. This seems to me ridiculously negative and a facile interpretation of national identity in general. it is also typical of the terrible "fear-uncertainty-and-doubt" that those opposed to Scotland existing as an independent Nation State are currently peddling. This all seemed unnecessary.
In summary, this is a book that frustrated me. It's well-conceived and enjoyable enough, but for me - and I accept this is personal preference - it fell down in a number of areas.
Final analysis: if you like counter-factuals, you'll love "Dominion".
February 9, 2014
I have a theory about this book. I think CJ Sansom wrote it a long time ago. It may even have been his first attempt at a novel. If so, I imagine it was rejected many times over for the perceived faults that I'll go into here and other reviewers have commented on. Then, when the counterfactual 'genre' became popular, the author (or his agent) decided it would be a good idea to dust Dominion off, give it a quick read through and get it published on the back of his now-established reputation.
How else can we explain the clunky over-expositionary dialogue, the repetitions of character traits, the over-use of adverbs and the re-descriptions of events? All of these 'faults' are typical of a newbie at the creative writing class. We don't expect them from a writer with six novels under his belt.
Admittedly, the author has to deal with connecting the wires of his version of the world to that which existed in 1940. There are a lot of links to be made and they have to be explained somehow but this leads to some very bizarre conversations where one character is giving another a details of the past that the recipient would already know.
On the plus side I was able to suspend disbelief and was interested in the characters enough to hope they 'got away with it'. The tension built in waves but they all came crashing down in a denouement that undermined the whole premise of the plot.
Finally, something has to be said about the didactic passages about the dangers of nationalism that the author places at intervals through the book. In these he tries to persuade the reader that nationalism is a sort of Nazism-lite. This is bizarre enough, but he goes on to state the case that the Scottish National Party (in his alternate world) is a particularly nasty example of Quisling-style collaboration. Sansom seems to be quite relaxed about this smearing the current SNP. (The other nationalist parties are not given this negative treatment and the three major UK parties have both resistance heroes and collaborators.)
If the anti SNP bias in the narrative is not strange enough, in a note at the end of the book Sansom goes into a personal diatribe against the party and its introduction of the Scottish Independence referendum and he urges us to support the 'UK Better Together' campaign. This turned me against the book and its author. It has no place at the end of a novel.
How else can we explain the clunky over-expositionary dialogue, the repetitions of character traits, the over-use of adverbs and the re-descriptions of events? All of these 'faults' are typical of a newbie at the creative writing class. We don't expect them from a writer with six novels under his belt.
Admittedly, the author has to deal with connecting the wires of his version of the world to that which existed in 1940. There are a lot of links to be made and they have to be explained somehow but this leads to some very bizarre conversations where one character is giving another a details of the past that the recipient would already know.
On the plus side I was able to suspend disbelief and was interested in the characters enough to hope they 'got away with it'. The tension built in waves but they all came crashing down in a denouement that undermined the whole premise of the plot.
Finally, something has to be said about the didactic passages about the dangers of nationalism that the author places at intervals through the book. In these he tries to persuade the reader that nationalism is a sort of Nazism-lite. This is bizarre enough, but he goes on to state the case that the Scottish National Party (in his alternate world) is a particularly nasty example of Quisling-style collaboration. Sansom seems to be quite relaxed about this smearing the current SNP. (The other nationalist parties are not given this negative treatment and the three major UK parties have both resistance heroes and collaborators.)
If the anti SNP bias in the narrative is not strange enough, in a note at the end of the book Sansom goes into a personal diatribe against the party and its introduction of the Scottish Independence referendum and he urges us to support the 'UK Better Together' campaign. This turned me against the book and its author. It has no place at the end of a novel.
January 2, 2022
Read this book in 2012, and its a standalone book about London after losing WWII to the Germans.
This tale is set in 1952, and Germany controlling events in London and the rest of Britain.
Everything is under supreme control, with the likes of the press, radio and tv, streets are patrolled by violent police, and all this and ever greater constraints the British will have to endure.
But resistance is growing, with Winston Churchill's Organization at the heart of it, but also an incarcerated scientist, Frank Muncaster, will play a very important part towards freedom, for he knows a secret that could change the balance of world struggle for ever.
To release this Frank Muncaster, Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, secret spy for the Resistance, is sent to Birmingham in an attempt to rescue him and get him out of the country.
What is to follow is a very thrilling kind of historical adventure, and that is brought to us by the author in a very entertaining fashion.
Very much recommended, for this is a splendid alternate story, and that's why I like to call this captivating book: "A Very Exciting Dominion"!
This tale is set in 1952, and Germany controlling events in London and the rest of Britain.
Everything is under supreme control, with the likes of the press, radio and tv, streets are patrolled by violent police, and all this and ever greater constraints the British will have to endure.
But resistance is growing, with Winston Churchill's Organization at the heart of it, but also an incarcerated scientist, Frank Muncaster, will play a very important part towards freedom, for he knows a secret that could change the balance of world struggle for ever.
To release this Frank Muncaster, Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, secret spy for the Resistance, is sent to Birmingham in an attempt to rescue him and get him out of the country.
What is to follow is a very thrilling kind of historical adventure, and that is brought to us by the author in a very entertaining fashion.
Very much recommended, for this is a splendid alternate story, and that's why I like to call this captivating book: "A Very Exciting Dominion"!
February 9, 2019
A chilling tale of an alternate Earth where World War II ended in 1940 with Hitler victorious. The bulk of the book takes place in the early 1950s in a Nazi occupied England.
I absolutely loved this book. It horrified me but, more importantly, made me think about WWII in ways I never had before.
This was my first taste of C.J. Sansom’s work but, after this, I’ll definitely be reading more. Highly recommended.
I absolutely loved this book. It horrified me but, more importantly, made me think about WWII in ways I never had before.
This was my first taste of C.J. Sansom’s work but, after this, I’ll definitely be reading more. Highly recommended.
February 1, 2026
This was my first alternative history novel, and it was really good.
It's 1940 and the British have surrendered to Germany. Fast forward eleven years, what does the world look like under German rule? Is the resistance still going or are people accepting new the regime?
Such an interesting topic and this would make an excellent book club book.
It's a brick of a book at six hundred pages but it was worth reading for sure.
Four stars.
It's 1940 and the British have surrendered to Germany. Fast forward eleven years, what does the world look like under German rule? Is the resistance still going or are people accepting new the regime?
Such an interesting topic and this would make an excellent book club book.
It's a brick of a book at six hundred pages but it was worth reading for sure.
Four stars.
May 21, 2018
8/10
The interesting thing with alternate history novels is how much you know about that time and what is factual and what is played upon. I’m no history buff but even I know that Germany didn’t win World War 2.
The prologue sets things up nicely with Churchill not becoming Prime Minister and all shit hitting the fan before being introduced to the main characters some 10 years later.
This is by far the longest audiobook I’ve listened to and the narrator kept things moving nicely. I never got bored and 20 hours didn’t seem that long overall.
The story is interesting enough but the real interest is the world Sansom weaves in the what if scenario. This is done really well and it never feels like things are glossed over for ease. Things work well in this novel, it’s not quite as good as his Shardlake series (which I highly recommend) but it was an interesting listen nonetheless.
The interesting thing with alternate history novels is how much you know about that time and what is factual and what is played upon. I’m no history buff but even I know that Germany didn’t win World War 2.
The prologue sets things up nicely with Churchill not becoming Prime Minister and all shit hitting the fan before being introduced to the main characters some 10 years later.
This is by far the longest audiobook I’ve listened to and the narrator kept things moving nicely. I never got bored and 20 hours didn’t seem that long overall.
The story is interesting enough but the real interest is the world Sansom weaves in the what if scenario. This is done really well and it never feels like things are glossed over for ease. Things work well in this novel, it’s not quite as good as his Shardlake series (which I highly recommend) but it was an interesting listen nonetheless.
June 7, 2018
This is 1952. Britain has made peace with Germany after the Dunkirk debacle.
Britain is now governed by a crypto-fascist regime headed by Max Aitken and Lord Beaverbrook, the press magnate. Meanwhile, although War in Britain is over, the War between Russia and Germany still continues and there seems to be no sign of it abating.
The presence of the Resistance in Britain headed by Churchill is everywhere, for although the Germans do not occupy Britain, the nation is still very much under their sphere of influence, this is evident by the tightening Jewish laws, the roundups of Jews and the ubiquitous presence of armed police.
What is striking though is the fear, the utter fear that everyone is under. The smallest infraction can lead to interminable interrogations, unimaginable torture, imprisonment maybe even death. The Gestapo is everywhere striking fear deep in the hearts of every person in Britain.
In Germany Hitler is suffering from advanced stages of Parkinson’s, a power struggle is about to ensue. Who will succeed Hitler?
The personages are ordinary people trying their best to lead a ‘normal life’ under these strained circumstances.
Everyone does their bit to shake off this terrible ordeal of the German occupation. David Fitzgerald works as a Civil servant, smuggles sensitive papers to the Resistance. Sarah, his wife a pacifist is not allowed to work but volunteers to aid children. Then there is a ring of course of pro-resistance people scattered in the Bureaucracy who regularly spy for the Resistance. There are dormant cells which suddenly turn active when the need arises. It goes without saying that the Germans have their own people entrenched as Civil Servants. Moles and counter moles abound. Everyone tries to do their bit sometimes with grave danger to their own life.
Throw in the geologist Frank Muncaster in this ring of fear and terrible uncertainty. Muncaster a scientist, has a maimed hand, an odd smile and is terribly fearful of everything. He however, leads a peaceful and decent life entrenched in his lab, likes his nice job and is pretty much happy.
Just when things are going on quite well for Frank, his mother dies and his brother Edgar comes down for her funeral from the United States of America. Edgar, a physicist, brags that he is part of an extremely sensitive project. Edgar seems to be drinking heavily and despite his good job is deeply in need of money.
So they decide to sell Mother’s house. For some reason an argument ensues between Frank and Edgar, who in a fit of bravado and drink tells Frank about the extremely sensitive project that he is working on, this drives Frank utterly berserk, he pushes Edgar out of a window and goes totally stark raving mad. Everyone hears Frank screaming, repeating over and over, 'the World is coming to an end' all the while trashing his apartment, sadly for Frank his descent into hell has just begun; he is packed off to a lunatic asylum.
His incarceration in the lunatic asylum is just the beginning of his horrors, all of a sudden everyone, just about everyone wants to lay their grubby paws on poor Frank. The Resistance, the Germans, the Americans even Churchill want sad Frank for themselves. Every side risks their lives to get hold of Frank; everyone wants to know, what the Great Big Secret is all about…
In a fit of camaraderie, Frank reveals the secret to David who is trying to get Frank off to America with the help of other resistance workers.
Now I wonder, it is no secret that the Americans and the Germans were in the race to build an 'extremely powerful weapon' to have an edge over the other side, victory would then be assured for the side in possession of the 'most powerful weapon'.
The British were aware too, they had intercepted a lot of documents that had something to do with obtaining raw material for the 'extremely powerful weapon' from Canada.
Surely, Edgar, the brother could not have revealed much of the process to Frank during a drunken brawl. All he could have said was 'I helped develop an extremely powerful weapon, that will annihilate the World’ but that is hardly a ‘Secret’, brilliant scientists on both sides must have been aware of the devastating effects of such 'extremely powerful weapons'?
To risk men and material to kidnap a sad geologist in the throes of a nervous breakdown so as to obtain a Dreadful Secret leaves me wondering and gasping...
I did read a lot of Reviews of this book, these have enriched me immensely, I have read brilliant arguments about Britain during the ‘what if’ scenario and comparisons to Britain now,in the present age.
I have read about Fascism, comparisons of it to different forms of Fascism in Europe.
To the amazing reviewers who taught me such a great deal, Thank you.
Britain is now governed by a crypto-fascist regime headed by Max Aitken and Lord Beaverbrook, the press magnate. Meanwhile, although War in Britain is over, the War between Russia and Germany still continues and there seems to be no sign of it abating.
The presence of the Resistance in Britain headed by Churchill is everywhere, for although the Germans do not occupy Britain, the nation is still very much under their sphere of influence, this is evident by the tightening Jewish laws, the roundups of Jews and the ubiquitous presence of armed police.
What is striking though is the fear, the utter fear that everyone is under. The smallest infraction can lead to interminable interrogations, unimaginable torture, imprisonment maybe even death. The Gestapo is everywhere striking fear deep in the hearts of every person in Britain.
In Germany Hitler is suffering from advanced stages of Parkinson’s, a power struggle is about to ensue. Who will succeed Hitler?
The personages are ordinary people trying their best to lead a ‘normal life’ under these strained circumstances.
Everyone does their bit to shake off this terrible ordeal of the German occupation. David Fitzgerald works as a Civil servant, smuggles sensitive papers to the Resistance. Sarah, his wife a pacifist is not allowed to work but volunteers to aid children. Then there is a ring of course of pro-resistance people scattered in the Bureaucracy who regularly spy for the Resistance. There are dormant cells which suddenly turn active when the need arises. It goes without saying that the Germans have their own people entrenched as Civil Servants. Moles and counter moles abound. Everyone tries to do their bit sometimes with grave danger to their own life.
Throw in the geologist Frank Muncaster in this ring of fear and terrible uncertainty. Muncaster a scientist, has a maimed hand, an odd smile and is terribly fearful of everything. He however, leads a peaceful and decent life entrenched in his lab, likes his nice job and is pretty much happy.
Just when things are going on quite well for Frank, his mother dies and his brother Edgar comes down for her funeral from the United States of America. Edgar, a physicist, brags that he is part of an extremely sensitive project. Edgar seems to be drinking heavily and despite his good job is deeply in need of money.
So they decide to sell Mother’s house. For some reason an argument ensues between Frank and Edgar, who in a fit of bravado and drink tells Frank about the extremely sensitive project that he is working on, this drives Frank utterly berserk, he pushes Edgar out of a window and goes totally stark raving mad. Everyone hears Frank screaming, repeating over and over, 'the World is coming to an end' all the while trashing his apartment, sadly for Frank his descent into hell has just begun; he is packed off to a lunatic asylum.
His incarceration in the lunatic asylum is just the beginning of his horrors, all of a sudden everyone, just about everyone wants to lay their grubby paws on poor Frank. The Resistance, the Germans, the Americans even Churchill want sad Frank for themselves. Every side risks their lives to get hold of Frank; everyone wants to know, what the Great Big Secret is all about…
In a fit of camaraderie, Frank reveals the secret to David who is trying to get Frank off to America with the help of other resistance workers.
Now I wonder, it is no secret that the Americans and the Germans were in the race to build an 'extremely powerful weapon' to have an edge over the other side, victory would then be assured for the side in possession of the 'most powerful weapon'.
The British were aware too, they had intercepted a lot of documents that had something to do with obtaining raw material for the 'extremely powerful weapon' from Canada.
Surely, Edgar, the brother could not have revealed much of the process to Frank during a drunken brawl. All he could have said was 'I helped develop an extremely powerful weapon, that will annihilate the World’ but that is hardly a ‘Secret’, brilliant scientists on both sides must have been aware of the devastating effects of such 'extremely powerful weapons'?
To risk men and material to kidnap a sad geologist in the throes of a nervous breakdown so as to obtain a Dreadful Secret leaves me wondering and gasping...
I did read a lot of Reviews of this book, these have enriched me immensely, I have read brilliant arguments about Britain during the ‘what if’ scenario and comparisons to Britain now,in the present age.
I have read about Fascism, comparisons of it to different forms of Fascism in Europe.
To the amazing reviewers who taught me such a great deal, Thank you.
January 7, 2013
Thought-provoking, highly atmospheric, novel.
Also, wonderful end papers - maps of Europe and of the world in this fictional 1952.
Also, wonderful end papers - maps of Europe and of the world in this fictional 1952.
June 13, 2017
What IF Churchill had stood aside & let Lord Halifax become PM when Chamberlain resigned? So begins our story & the route of appeasement is followed in 1940 after the fall of Norway & France in the West. Instead of fighting on alone, Britain too accepts an armistice with Germany, falling under her sphere of influence with the Isle of Wight annexed to the German Army. This is the premise that what is too follow is based on.
For the protagonists we have the British divided into pro/anti Nazis factions, for the Germans you have the Army against the SS where division grows as the years pass & for the Americans ever the isolationists & as such have managed to spend their resources on an armaments race which they are winning. It’s about politics, spying & the way of life in an alternate Britain.
The first 100+ pages introduce us to the main players & as we come across them their backstory is laid out which also allows us to get a glimpse as to how this alternate 1952 came about through the different protagonists & from a historical stance it really isn’t much of a stretch to imagine at all. It’s all very feasible.
As virtually every chapter includes an interlude/flashback which fills in the backstory of the political landscape since 1940 you’ll need to have a real interest in the alternate history side of things as the thriller is very slow moving throughout & not a patch on his Shardlake series in that respect. For me it’s a period i’ve followed (Inter-war & upto 1950) & so held my focus where others might in truth struggle. A teaser of life in an alternate 1952 shows us the rise of Moseley to Home secretary, the Germans jostling for power as Hitler ails, Prime Minister Quisling of Norway, Fanny Craddock teaching viewers to make Sauerkraut.... its all there ;)
The story per say really doesn’t start to open up with any action until well over 50% through so its a slow burner style for sure & then well......... it’s not fantastic in truth & is a bit of a stodgy affair in places. I enjoyed his Winter in Madrid standalone & love the Shardlake series but found this hard to really enjoy as a complete work & it’s a tough one to review as it goes from a 4 (Historical content) to a 2 (thriller story) ...... all in all I would score it a rounded down three from 3.5
For the protagonists we have the British divided into pro/anti Nazis factions, for the Germans you have the Army against the SS where division grows as the years pass & for the Americans ever the isolationists & as such have managed to spend their resources on an armaments race which they are winning. It’s about politics, spying & the way of life in an alternate Britain.
The first 100+ pages introduce us to the main players & as we come across them their backstory is laid out which also allows us to get a glimpse as to how this alternate 1952 came about through the different protagonists & from a historical stance it really isn’t much of a stretch to imagine at all. It’s all very feasible.
As virtually every chapter includes an interlude/flashback which fills in the backstory of the political landscape since 1940 you’ll need to have a real interest in the alternate history side of things as the thriller is very slow moving throughout & not a patch on his Shardlake series in that respect. For me it’s a period i’ve followed (Inter-war & upto 1950) & so held my focus where others might in truth struggle. A teaser of life in an alternate 1952 shows us the rise of Moseley to Home secretary, the Germans jostling for power as Hitler ails, Prime Minister Quisling of Norway, Fanny Craddock teaching viewers to make Sauerkraut.... its all there ;)
The story per say really doesn’t start to open up with any action until well over 50% through so its a slow burner style for sure & then well......... it’s not fantastic in truth & is a bit of a stodgy affair in places. I enjoyed his Winter in Madrid standalone & love the Shardlake series but found this hard to really enjoy as a complete work & it’s a tough one to review as it goes from a 4 (Historical content) to a 2 (thriller story) ...... all in all I would score it a rounded down three from 3.5
June 11, 2016
Not So Imaginary
Not everything, actually. The England of 1952, when the main part of the novel opens, is very similar to the England I knew growing up, a little shabby, and with life going on much as usual. There is a young Queen on the throne, Rememberance Day is still celebrated at the Cenotaph, and Richard Dimbleby still reads the BBC News. A few things have changed, of course: the Jewish-owned Lyons Corner Houses are now British Corner Houses, and right-wing politicians such as Mosley and Powell are in the ascendant, though other latterly-famous names such as Butler and Douglas-Home nonetheless have senior positions in the post-treaty government. The Germans do not occupy Britain, but make no mistake about it, the nation is still very much under their sphere of influence, two examples of which are the tightening Jewish laws, and the ubiquitous presence of armed police.
Writing the above, I suddenly wondered about Sansom's audience. Young though I was, all the names I mentioned were part of my daily awareness, then or later. But what of people who did not grow up in Britain around this time; must they rely on other reading to provide the background against which Sansom's book works so brilliantly? The payoff for Sansom's meticulous research (there are 25 pages of appendices) is that, for British people of around my generation, it is sobering to see how easily the fascism we associate with foreign countries could have taken root in Britain, even with much the same cast of characters. It is the detail that brings it home.
But what about other readers? Is the story that Sansom offers strong enough to work even for those who know little about the period? He certainly has the political thriller genre pretty much down, with different groups—resistance agents, British and German police, wives and innocent acquaintances—spiralling each other, colliding and bouncing off again, and eventually coming together in a nail-biting climax. But the book is too long and its central premise is weak; there is no way that the secret held by Frank Muncaster, a timid geologist committed to a mental hospital outside Birmingham, could have been substantial enough to have the Americans, the British, the Resistance, and the Germans all determined to get him to themselves, no matter the cost.
Sansom is good, though, with a lot of the personal details, especially in tracing the gradual shifting of sympathies even in the minds of some of the secondary characters, and in depicting the toll that clandestine activity exacts on marriage and friendship. But I was always conscious of the artificial construction.The romantic entanglement, for instance, that Sansom introduces to complicate the life of the leading character seemed manufactured rather than organic. And watching the various conflicting forces come together towards a climactic midnight encounter on a deserted pebble beach, I was only too aware that by adjusting a gunshot here or there, the author could bring it to whatever conclusion he wanted. In the end, I was satisfied—but I should have been caught up in the characters, not watching the writer.
After citing numerous historical works as references, Sansom pays enthusiastic homage to one novel: Fatherland by Robert Harris (1992), a book I have not yet read. In many ways, the two writers are very similar. But though I have never read a Harris book that was less than five stars, this one of Sansom's, I'm afraid, is closer to four.
All events that take place after 5:00 p.m. on 9 May 1940 are imaginary.The moment that the author refers to in his disclaimer is the scene which forms the brilliant climax to Michael Dobbs' Winston's War, the British cabinet meeting at which Neville Chamberlain, the discredited appeaser, resigns and Winston Churchill takes over as Prime Minister. But in Sansom's book, he doesn't; the job goes instead to Lord Halifax, better connected and the safer bet. Halifax, though, has less stomach for war, and sues for peace after pulling the British army out of France at Dunkirk. And with that, everything is changed.
Not everything, actually. The England of 1952, when the main part of the novel opens, is very similar to the England I knew growing up, a little shabby, and with life going on much as usual. There is a young Queen on the throne, Rememberance Day is still celebrated at the Cenotaph, and Richard Dimbleby still reads the BBC News. A few things have changed, of course: the Jewish-owned Lyons Corner Houses are now British Corner Houses, and right-wing politicians such as Mosley and Powell are in the ascendant, though other latterly-famous names such as Butler and Douglas-Home nonetheless have senior positions in the post-treaty government. The Germans do not occupy Britain, but make no mistake about it, the nation is still very much under their sphere of influence, two examples of which are the tightening Jewish laws, and the ubiquitous presence of armed police.
Writing the above, I suddenly wondered about Sansom's audience. Young though I was, all the names I mentioned were part of my daily awareness, then or later. But what of people who did not grow up in Britain around this time; must they rely on other reading to provide the background against which Sansom's book works so brilliantly? The payoff for Sansom's meticulous research (there are 25 pages of appendices) is that, for British people of around my generation, it is sobering to see how easily the fascism we associate with foreign countries could have taken root in Britain, even with much the same cast of characters. It is the detail that brings it home.
But what about other readers? Is the story that Sansom offers strong enough to work even for those who know little about the period? He certainly has the political thriller genre pretty much down, with different groups—resistance agents, British and German police, wives and innocent acquaintances—spiralling each other, colliding and bouncing off again, and eventually coming together in a nail-biting climax. But the book is too long and its central premise is weak; there is no way that the secret held by Frank Muncaster, a timid geologist committed to a mental hospital outside Birmingham, could have been substantial enough to have the Americans, the British, the Resistance, and the Germans all determined to get him to themselves, no matter the cost.
Sansom is good, though, with a lot of the personal details, especially in tracing the gradual shifting of sympathies even in the minds of some of the secondary characters, and in depicting the toll that clandestine activity exacts on marriage and friendship. But I was always conscious of the artificial construction.The romantic entanglement, for instance, that Sansom introduces to complicate the life of the leading character seemed manufactured rather than organic. And watching the various conflicting forces come together towards a climactic midnight encounter on a deserted pebble beach, I was only too aware that by adjusting a gunshot here or there, the author could bring it to whatever conclusion he wanted. In the end, I was satisfied—but I should have been caught up in the characters, not watching the writer.
After citing numerous historical works as references, Sansom pays enthusiastic homage to one novel: Fatherland by Robert Harris (1992), a book I have not yet read. In many ways, the two writers are very similar. But though I have never read a Harris book that was less than five stars, this one of Sansom's, I'm afraid, is closer to four.
June 29, 2019
Dominion is a slow burning spy novel with an alternate history twist. Clocking in at just under 700 pages (the perfect paperback edition), the book requires patience as a steady stream of characters (complete with lengthy backstories) are introduced along with multiple plot threads which eventually converge.
Don’t be mistaken for thinking Dominion is a historical book based on fact. It’s distinctly alt-reality with Britain having surrendered to Germany, leaving the Nazi regime largely in control post WWII Europe. The plot doesn’t delve too deep into international conflict, espionage, or guerilla warfare, rather, author C.J. Sansom focuses on a small group of resistance fighters and their plight to keep a world changing secret safe from their oppressors.
There’s a lot to like about Dominion but the pacing could’ve been a touch quicker for my liking. Irrespective of this, fans of Tom Clancy’s Red Rabbit for instance, and other character-focused spy novels will likely enjoy this book.
My rating: 4/5 stars.
Don’t be mistaken for thinking Dominion is a historical book based on fact. It’s distinctly alt-reality with Britain having surrendered to Germany, leaving the Nazi regime largely in control post WWII Europe. The plot doesn’t delve too deep into international conflict, espionage, or guerilla warfare, rather, author C.J. Sansom focuses on a small group of resistance fighters and their plight to keep a world changing secret safe from their oppressors.
There’s a lot to like about Dominion but the pacing could’ve been a touch quicker for my liking. Irrespective of this, fans of Tom Clancy’s Red Rabbit for instance, and other character-focused spy novels will likely enjoy this book.
My rating: 4/5 stars.
December 8, 2012
This book was a bit - well, miserable. In many ways it was well-written enough, in other ways some things annoyed me. But the fact is, I just didn't really enjoy it very much. I found I had to force myself to plough on to the end, and if I hadn't been listening to the audio book version, I'm pretty sure I would have put it aside for later about halfway through and not bothered to pick it up again.
The premise intrigued me, which is why I chose it in the first place - it's set in a Britain which lost the Second World War or which, more accurately, never really fought it. In the universe of this novel, we made peace with Germany in 1940 and the Facist regime has been our ally for the past 15 years or so. The novel is set in the early fifties. Germany reigns supreme in Europe and Britain is under its thumb, though not actually occupied.
I respect Sansome as a historically accurate author because of his detailed, vivid, convincing Shardlake series, set in a real-feeling medieval Britain, so I've no doubt that this pseudo-history is all plausible and well-researched. It just isn't very exciting or colourful, as indeed Britain was not in the real 1950s. And various characters have an unfortunate tendency to info-dump the politics of the setting at each other, in 'as-you-know-my-friend' kind of way. There's also a feeling at some points that they suspect they're in an AU historical novel. "Ah my friend, sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we had not made peace with the Germans in 1940. What would the world be like today?" Seriously, does anyone in the real world say things like, for instance, "Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we had not fought Argentina in 1982?"
So then, the actual story is a spy thriller. Of sorts. But I'm afraid it's not, or at least it wasn't as far as I was concerned, very thrilling.
For a start, we have frank and full access to the actions, motivations and intentions of both sides. So the narrative viewpoint is split between the evil baddie Nazi Gestapo commander who is sent to the UK to capture a British scientist with a military secret, a decent British chap who is spying for the Resistance, decent chap's insipid wife, and the scientist with undiagnosed Aspergers and a long-winded boarding school backstory. The result of this freedom of information policy is that nothing major is a surprise to the reader, and there are many many scenes of characters discussing and pondering the significance of something that the reader already knows. For instance, the spy, David Fitzgerald, has a wife who suspects he is having an affair. We know he isn't. He's a spy. Thus the late nights at the office and unexpected weekends away. Nonetheless, we have to read long conversations with David's wife's sister discussing her concerns, and long introspections while she tries to make up her mind. This can be infuriating, especially when the plot itself gets underway and we know exactly what the baddies are doing and planning. It's just a case of watching it all plod along, with very few unanswered questions to hook the reader's interest. There are no twists and turns. Nobody turns out to be working for someone else. Nobody betrays anyone.
Annoyingly, there IS one piece of information kept arbitrarily from us, and that is the Big Secret that the hapless scientist, Frank Muncaster, has inadvertently learned from his drunken brother. Given that we have full access to every passing thought from every viewpoint character, and given that Frank spends most of his time worrying that he'll give the Big Secret away, it feels pretty artificial that we're not told what it is. When eventually we are, I found it a bit of an anticlimax.
There is a lot of weather in this book. Lots of cold, damp, rain and fog. After a while, that began to feel repetitive too.
It just wasn't for me, I suppose. The characters are well enough drawn, but I found them all unappealing. And for what it's worth, I think the multiplicity of viewpoints was a mistake, one that stopped the story being in any way exciting. But I can see that plenty of other readers really appreciated it, so I think this one comes down to personal taste.
The premise intrigued me, which is why I chose it in the first place - it's set in a Britain which lost the Second World War or which, more accurately, never really fought it. In the universe of this novel, we made peace with Germany in 1940 and the Facist regime has been our ally for the past 15 years or so. The novel is set in the early fifties. Germany reigns supreme in Europe and Britain is under its thumb, though not actually occupied.
I respect Sansome as a historically accurate author because of his detailed, vivid, convincing Shardlake series, set in a real-feeling medieval Britain, so I've no doubt that this pseudo-history is all plausible and well-researched. It just isn't very exciting or colourful, as indeed Britain was not in the real 1950s. And various characters have an unfortunate tendency to info-dump the politics of the setting at each other, in 'as-you-know-my-friend' kind of way. There's also a feeling at some points that they suspect they're in an AU historical novel. "Ah my friend, sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we had not made peace with the Germans in 1940. What would the world be like today?" Seriously, does anyone in the real world say things like, for instance, "Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we had not fought Argentina in 1982?"
So then, the actual story is a spy thriller. Of sorts. But I'm afraid it's not, or at least it wasn't as far as I was concerned, very thrilling.
For a start, we have frank and full access to the actions, motivations and intentions of both sides. So the narrative viewpoint is split between the evil baddie Nazi Gestapo commander who is sent to the UK to capture a British scientist with a military secret, a decent British chap who is spying for the Resistance, decent chap's insipid wife, and the scientist with undiagnosed Aspergers and a long-winded boarding school backstory. The result of this freedom of information policy is that nothing major is a surprise to the reader, and there are many many scenes of characters discussing and pondering the significance of something that the reader already knows. For instance, the spy, David Fitzgerald, has a wife who suspects he is having an affair. We know he isn't. He's a spy. Thus the late nights at the office and unexpected weekends away. Nonetheless, we have to read long conversations with David's wife's sister discussing her concerns, and long introspections while she tries to make up her mind. This can be infuriating, especially when the plot itself gets underway and we know exactly what the baddies are doing and planning. It's just a case of watching it all plod along, with very few unanswered questions to hook the reader's interest. There are no twists and turns. Nobody turns out to be working for someone else. Nobody betrays anyone.
Annoyingly, there IS one piece of information kept arbitrarily from us, and that is the Big Secret that the hapless scientist, Frank Muncaster, has inadvertently learned from his drunken brother. Given that we have full access to every passing thought from every viewpoint character, and given that Frank spends most of his time worrying that he'll give the Big Secret away, it feels pretty artificial that we're not told what it is. When eventually we are, I found it a bit of an anticlimax.
There is a lot of weather in this book. Lots of cold, damp, rain and fog. After a while, that began to feel repetitive too.
It just wasn't for me, I suppose. The characters are well enough drawn, but I found them all unappealing. And for what it's worth, I think the multiplicity of viewpoints was a mistake, one that stopped the story being in any way exciting. But I can see that plenty of other readers really appreciated it, so I think this one comes down to personal taste.
February 1, 2013
I loved the story, was carried along by it and finally finished reading it in the middle of the night.
I thought the whole alternate history concept was excellent, and I was drawn into the whole world very well. The politics were convincing. The bad guys were too.
But the central issue that drove the whole plot was, IMO, flawed. I didn't understand at all why the Americans wanted Frank. Yes, he knew his brother's secret. But they had his brother, and they had their own scientists. All they really needed was for the danger posed by Frank's knowledge to be neutralised.
Also after all the attention during the novel to Frank not wanting to tell anyone - the scene where he tells David the secret are completely implausible. And also really unnecessary - in fact I think it would work better if we didn't ever know the secret. We had an inkling anyway. But leaving it mysterious wouldn't draw so much attention to the enormous mcguffin shaped plot hole.
And I don't know who it was in that key scene at the end, but it certainly wasn't Churchill. The hard decisions we know he took in the war do not lead me me to believe he would be the kind of resistance leader who would spare the sensitivies of one man, compared to the potential benefit to the resistance. Black dog or no black dog...he would still have made that hard decision.
But it was a good read. I rather enjoyed the slow build up of tension in the beginning part of the book - I know that's probably an unusual personal taste. And I didn't mind the exposition - hard to imagine being able to write a book that depends so much on history and uimagine history without it. The second half though, that's a real pageturner.
An excellent read, but flawed.
I thought the whole alternate history concept was excellent, and I was drawn into the whole world very well. The politics were convincing. The bad guys were too.
But the central issue that drove the whole plot was, IMO, flawed. I didn't understand at all why the Americans wanted Frank. Yes, he knew his brother's secret. But they had his brother, and they had their own scientists. All they really needed was for the danger posed by Frank's knowledge to be neutralised.
Also after all the attention during the novel to Frank not wanting to tell anyone - the scene where he tells David the secret are completely implausible. And also really unnecessary - in fact I think it would work better if we didn't ever know the secret. We had an inkling anyway. But leaving it mysterious wouldn't draw so much attention to the enormous mcguffin shaped plot hole.
And I don't know who it was in that key scene at the end, but it certainly wasn't Churchill. The hard decisions we know he took in the war do not lead me me to believe he would be the kind of resistance leader who would spare the sensitivies of one man, compared to the potential benefit to the resistance. Black dog or no black dog...he would still have made that hard decision.
But it was a good read. I rather enjoyed the slow build up of tension in the beginning part of the book - I know that's probably an unusual personal taste. And I didn't mind the exposition - hard to imagine being able to write a book that depends so much on history and uimagine history without it. The second half though, that's a real pageturner.
An excellent read, but flawed.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 6, 2017
Onvan : Dominion - Nevisande : C.J. Sansom - ISBN : 230744168 - ISBN13 : 9780230744165 - Dar 593 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2012
May 6, 2014
It is 1952 and in the UK the people are ruled by a puppet government that submitted to the Nazi government in 1940 after the disaster of Dunkirk. Churchill is in hiding, and the anti German feeling and the boldness of the UK resistance is growing week on week. Germany is fighting Russia, still, a long and protracted war that seems to have no end. Hitler is still in charge of most of Europe, but is suffering from health issues and hasn’t been seen for a long time. As his power wains, the jostle between the Army and the SS starts for control. The puppet government in Britain finally cedes to the Germans request and starts rounding up Jewish people with prior to deportation to the east.
David is a minor civil servant working in the Dominion department, with a secret that not even his wife knows. He has anti German sympathies and he is approached by his university friend to work for the resistance by providing secret material to them. He befriends another lady in the same department, and surreptitiously obtains her key to the secret cabinet. He has a couple of close shaves whilst in copying secret documents, but one tiny error leaves him exposed. Following the tragic death of their child, his wife thinks he is having an affair, but when she finds out his real role, and is questioned by the authorities, she is drawn in to the activities of the resistance reluctantly.
Frank Muncaster is a scientist and a another university friend of David. His brother is now lives in America and is working on the atomic project, but is over to for their mother’s funeral. They have never got on, and they have a massive argument in Frank’s flat where Frank is told some of the secrets that xxx knows. He pushes him out the window, where he breaks his arm. Frank is deemed to be mad, and is sent to a mental hospital for treatment. Both the SS and the resistance realise that he holds the secret to the new weapons that America is developing, and both go to see him and visit his flat.
As David’s spying is exposed, he and his cell look at extracting Frank from the mental hospital and getting him to America with his secret. And so begins a tense race between the resistance cell moving Frank across the country and the authorities trying to track them down until the thrilling ending.
Sansom has done a reasonably good job here of a speculative future of a post WWII Britain where Churchill was never made PM and the fascists take over the running of the country. The elements of the plot are good too, from the gloomy despondent population that are slowly being oppressed, but have a glimmer of hope from the resistance under Churchill, to a Germany poised on the edge of civil war.
Well worth reading.
David is a minor civil servant working in the Dominion department, with a secret that not even his wife knows. He has anti German sympathies and he is approached by his university friend to work for the resistance by providing secret material to them. He befriends another lady in the same department, and surreptitiously obtains her key to the secret cabinet. He has a couple of close shaves whilst in copying secret documents, but one tiny error leaves him exposed. Following the tragic death of their child, his wife thinks he is having an affair, but when she finds out his real role, and is questioned by the authorities, she is drawn in to the activities of the resistance reluctantly.
Frank Muncaster is a scientist and a another university friend of David. His brother is now lives in America and is working on the atomic project, but is over to for their mother’s funeral. They have never got on, and they have a massive argument in Frank’s flat where Frank is told some of the secrets that xxx knows. He pushes him out the window, where he breaks his arm. Frank is deemed to be mad, and is sent to a mental hospital for treatment. Both the SS and the resistance realise that he holds the secret to the new weapons that America is developing, and both go to see him and visit his flat.
As David’s spying is exposed, he and his cell look at extracting Frank from the mental hospital and getting him to America with his secret. And so begins a tense race between the resistance cell moving Frank across the country and the authorities trying to track them down until the thrilling ending.
Sansom has done a reasonably good job here of a speculative future of a post WWII Britain where Churchill was never made PM and the fascists take over the running of the country. The elements of the plot are good too, from the gloomy despondent population that are slowly being oppressed, but have a glimmer of hope from the resistance under Churchill, to a Germany poised on the edge of civil war.
Well worth reading.
December 22, 2013
I'd had enough of this book by about a quarter of the way through. The constant flashbacks and reminiscences became annoying interruptions to the flow of the story. I began to wonder if the author was being paid by the word like Dickens because there was so much irrelevant background. The final straw was when Frank reminisced about his schooldays in Edinburgh. Sansom has Frank's brother and other pupils saying 'disnae' for doesn't and 'ye' for you. It's a private boarding school in Edinburgh, for God's sake. The pupils would no more speak like that than Eton pupils would speak Cockney! If you think I'm being pedantic then yes, I am, but it's lack of accuracy such as this that leaves the reader doubting the accuracy of everything else. Two stars for the premise of the book which was interesting up to a point.
July 27, 2020
Many bad reviews of this but I loved it. Having surrendered in 1940 Britain is a satellite of Nazi Germany - not occupied but very much under their control. A junior civil servant gets involved with a plot to rescue an old friend with a deadly secret and all set against the start of the Final Solution reaching England and all Jews being rounded up. Very dark, thought provoking and a rollicking good thriller - Sansom likes to put in extensive background stories for every charactet but this worked for me. Brilliant premis and high quality read.
January 27, 2019
3 stars.
The Book was okay with me, but it is not as good as the "Winter In Madrid" by the same author. The notion of alternate history looks awesome to me, but the picture which Sansom painted seemed a bit unrealistic to me.
First of all, there is the question of who will succeed Hitler after his death. The best candidate for me would have been Göring. But in the book, he has died long before 1952, which is premature. The second best candidate, for me, would have been Rommel, but the author just completely left him out.
Then there comes the question of the time of Hitler's death if the WWII hadn't happened. It should have been somewhere i the 60s, but in the book, he died in December 1952 which seems to me a bit early.
Next comes the British picture. If Britain did surrender, things should have been much worse for them, here I must say the author was lenient. But it does seem to me likely that Llyod George would have returned as Prime Minister later in the 40s.
Here, Frank Muncaster's reaction after hearing about the atom bomb seemed exaggerated to me. The reaction seemed to me like a baby who just learnt what a snake can do to humans. And Frank is also portrayed as a scientist, so overall the reaction was unreal and crazy.
Lastly, I must tell that Sansom is a truly talented writer, but all he needs to do is to observe the historical things more thoroughly. This book could have been a lot better, but it seemed to me that Sansom had written only about his own political beliefs. Otherwise, Sansom's writings are Great and i might want to try out his books if i find one.
The Book was okay with me, but it is not as good as the "Winter In Madrid" by the same author. The notion of alternate history looks awesome to me, but the picture which Sansom painted seemed a bit unrealistic to me.
First of all, there is the question of who will succeed Hitler after his death. The best candidate for me would have been Göring. But in the book, he has died long before 1952, which is premature. The second best candidate, for me, would have been Rommel, but the author just completely left him out.
Then there comes the question of the time of Hitler's death if the WWII hadn't happened. It should have been somewhere i the 60s, but in the book, he died in December 1952 which seems to me a bit early.
Next comes the British picture. If Britain did surrender, things should have been much worse for them, here I must say the author was lenient. But it does seem to me likely that Llyod George would have returned as Prime Minister later in the 40s.
Here, Frank Muncaster's reaction after hearing about the atom bomb seemed exaggerated to me. The reaction seemed to me like a baby who just learnt what a snake can do to humans. And Frank is also portrayed as a scientist, so overall the reaction was unreal and crazy.
Lastly, I must tell that Sansom is a truly talented writer, but all he needs to do is to observe the historical things more thoroughly. This book could have been a lot better, but it seemed to me that Sansom had written only about his own political beliefs. Otherwise, Sansom's writings are Great and i might want to try out his books if i find one.
March 23, 2014
A well researched alternative history marred by being delivered as a tawdry thriller, and with too much of a modern-day political hidden agenda.
CJ Sansom has clearly done a lot of research and given a lot of thought to how history might have panned out had Lord Halifax rather than Churchill become Prime Minister in 1940 and had Britain gone on to sue for peace following Dunkirk.
Had he simply written a fictional-history of the subsequent events, then I suspect this would have been a 4 star review. Indeed the best bit of the book is the 10 page or so explanation at the end, which contains everything of value in the 500 pages of the novel.
Unfortunately, however, the main vehicle which he has chosen to set out his alternative history is a poorly written thriller with all of the typical problems of that genre - unrealistic characters, clunky dialogue, reliance on co-incidence and worst of all exposition masquerading as narration. To give one example, in one scene there is a gratuitous reference to a Church service that the characters drive past, simply so that the author can add in his views on how the Church of England would have reacted to events. The key plot device - a secret told by a US weapons scientist to his brother - seems also the least well researched part of the book.
The medium of fiction also allows him to get in some rather unfair digs at various historical characters (Lloyd George, Enoch Powell, Lord Beaverbrook, certain Labour leaders etc) based purely on his imagined history of how they would have supported a quasi-Nazi regime. Indeed his greatest opprobrium is reserved for the Scottish Nationalist Party and, rather bizarrely, the very last pages of his postscript reveal that the main purpose of the novel seems to be to weigh into the current debate on Scottish Independence.
CJ Sansom has clearly done a lot of research and given a lot of thought to how history might have panned out had Lord Halifax rather than Churchill become Prime Minister in 1940 and had Britain gone on to sue for peace following Dunkirk.
Had he simply written a fictional-history of the subsequent events, then I suspect this would have been a 4 star review. Indeed the best bit of the book is the 10 page or so explanation at the end, which contains everything of value in the 500 pages of the novel.
Unfortunately, however, the main vehicle which he has chosen to set out his alternative history is a poorly written thriller with all of the typical problems of that genre - unrealistic characters, clunky dialogue, reliance on co-incidence and worst of all exposition masquerading as narration. To give one example, in one scene there is a gratuitous reference to a Church service that the characters drive past, simply so that the author can add in his views on how the Church of England would have reacted to events. The key plot device - a secret told by a US weapons scientist to his brother - seems also the least well researched part of the book.
The medium of fiction also allows him to get in some rather unfair digs at various historical characters (Lloyd George, Enoch Powell, Lord Beaverbrook, certain Labour leaders etc) based purely on his imagined history of how they would have supported a quasi-Nazi regime. Indeed his greatest opprobrium is reserved for the Scottish Nationalist Party and, rather bizarrely, the very last pages of his postscript reveal that the main purpose of the novel seems to be to weigh into the current debate on Scottish Independence.
November 18, 2023
Sansomą aš mėgstu už jo istorinius romanus apie Matthew Shardlake. Buvo dar „Winter in Madrid“ – trileris, bet irgi istorinis, ne taip giliai pasineriantis į praeitį, viso labo į 1940-uosius Ispanijoje. O dabar štai pakalbėsim apie fantastiką. Nes alternatyvioji istorija juk priskiriama fantastikai. Taip, nėra čia elfų, nėra drakonų, nėra nei šviesos kardų ar Joninių variklių. Bet juk fantastika – ir taškas.
Taigi, 1952 metai. Praėjo dvylika metų nuo tada, kai po Diunkerko Didžioji Britanija sudarė taikos sutartį su nacistine Vokietija. Rytuose tebesitęsia ilgas Vokietijos karas su Rusija, o britai atsiduria tamsioje autoritarinėje valdžioje: spauda, radijas ir televizija kontroliuojami, gatvėse patruliuoja smurtaujanti pagalbinė policija, o Britanijos žydai susiduria su vis didesniais suvaržymais. Churchillis paskelbtas už įstatymo ribų, slapstosi pogrindyje ir iš ten vadovauja Pasipriešinimui.
Į Birmingemo psichiatrinę ligoninę patenka mokslininkas Frankas Muncasteris iš savo brolio, dirbančio amerikiečiams nugirdęs kai ką, kas labai praverstų vokiečiams. Valstybės tarnautojas Davidas Fitzgeraldas, slapta veikiantis kaip Pasipriešinimo organizacijos šnipas, gauna užduotį išgelbėti savo seną mokslų universitete laikų draugą Franką ir išvežti jį iš šalies. Davido žmona Sara, nieko nenutuokianti apie vyro veiklą, staiga atsiduria pasaulyje, kuris yra baisesnis, nei ji kada nors galėjo įsivaizduoti. Jai ir Davidui su Franku, bei jų bičiuliams ant kulnų lipa iš Vokietijos iškviestas gestapo šturmbanfiureris Guntheris Hothas, negailestingas žmonių medžiotojas...
Gal kokius pirmus penkiasdešimt puslapių skaičiau ir burbėjau: „Sansomai, Sansomai, na kodėl tu užuot rašęs ŠITAI, nesiėmei naujo Shardlake tomo?“. O paskui kažkaip staiga lioviausi burbėjęs. Knyga įtraukė ir nepaleido. Rekomenduoju net tiems, ką nuo žodžio „fantastika“ ištinka nevaldomi traukuliai. Pamirškit tą žodį ir perskaitykit kaip tiesiog gerą istorinį trilerį. Aha, sakau – istorinį, nes Sansomas taip įtikina, kad skaitydamas net pamiršti, kad mūsų istorija ėjo kiek kitokiu keliu.
Penki iš penkių. Čia be jokių nuolaidų.
Taigi, 1952 metai. Praėjo dvylika metų nuo tada, kai po Diunkerko Didžioji Britanija sudarė taikos sutartį su nacistine Vokietija. Rytuose tebesitęsia ilgas Vokietijos karas su Rusija, o britai atsiduria tamsioje autoritarinėje valdžioje: spauda, radijas ir televizija kontroliuojami, gatvėse patruliuoja smurtaujanti pagalbinė policija, o Britanijos žydai susiduria su vis didesniais suvaržymais. Churchillis paskelbtas už įstatymo ribų, slapstosi pogrindyje ir iš ten vadovauja Pasipriešinimui.
Į Birmingemo psichiatrinę ligoninę patenka mokslininkas Frankas Muncasteris iš savo brolio, dirbančio amerikiečiams nugirdęs kai ką, kas labai praverstų vokiečiams. Valstybės tarnautojas Davidas Fitzgeraldas, slapta veikiantis kaip Pasipriešinimo organizacijos šnipas, gauna užduotį išgelbėti savo seną mokslų universitete laikų draugą Franką ir išvežti jį iš šalies. Davido žmona Sara, nieko nenutuokianti apie vyro veiklą, staiga atsiduria pasaulyje, kuris yra baisesnis, nei ji kada nors galėjo įsivaizduoti. Jai ir Davidui su Franku, bei jų bičiuliams ant kulnų lipa iš Vokietijos iškviestas gestapo šturmbanfiureris Guntheris Hothas, negailestingas žmonių medžiotojas...
Gal kokius pirmus penkiasdešimt puslapių skaičiau ir burbėjau: „Sansomai, Sansomai, na kodėl tu užuot rašęs ŠITAI, nesiėmei naujo Shardlake tomo?“. O paskui kažkaip staiga lioviausi burbėjęs. Knyga įtraukė ir nepaleido. Rekomenduoju net tiems, ką nuo žodžio „fantastika“ ištinka nevaldomi traukuliai. Pamirškit tą žodį ir perskaitykit kaip tiesiog gerą istorinį trilerį. Aha, sakau – istorinį, nes Sansomas taip įtikina, kad skaitydamas net pamiršti, kad mūsų istorija ėjo kiek kitokiu keliu.
Penki iš penkių. Čia be jokių nuolaidų.
April 13, 2014
I found this an interesting premise for an Alt History novel. It is set in 1952 England, where instead of Churchill becoming Prime Minister when Chamberlain falls – Lord Halifax does. This sets in motion a chain of events that when France falls 2 months later England quits the war instead of fighting on. Western Europe, including England is dominated by Germany who is fighting an endless war in Russia. England becomes a Vichy state. As the novel opens the Germany is just starting to round up the Jews in England for shipment to the East.
A resistance movement has sprung up, and the main character in the novel, David Fitzgerald, a low level civil servant in the Dominions office, is passing them documents. He also has a big secret. There are secrets throughout this novel.
I really enjoyed the first half of this novel – as the author paints the picture and sets the stage. Mr Sansom does an excellent job of painting the dreary atmosphere of London both with the descriptions of the economic hardships and daily life - He even weaves real life events like the killing fog that happened in the winter of 1952 into the plot.
However, when he switches to the main plot line – the thriller/adventure story, things begin to go awry. I just didn’t find it very plausible or more importantly riveting. There are too many coincidences and lucky bounces to be believable. Also at 700 pages the novel could use a little editing.
One final thing – in his historical note, Mr Sansom goes off on how bad nationalism is and more specifically Scottish Nationalism. I really didn’t see what this had to do with the book and the need to include this rant.
On the whole – the picture of 1952 Britain under the Nazi thumb is very well done, the spy/adventure story line not so effective. I rate this 3.5 rounded down for Goodreads.
A resistance movement has sprung up, and the main character in the novel, David Fitzgerald, a low level civil servant in the Dominions office, is passing them documents. He also has a big secret. There are secrets throughout this novel.
I really enjoyed the first half of this novel – as the author paints the picture and sets the stage. Mr Sansom does an excellent job of painting the dreary atmosphere of London both with the descriptions of the economic hardships and daily life - He even weaves real life events like the killing fog that happened in the winter of 1952 into the plot.
However, when he switches to the main plot line – the thriller/adventure story, things begin to go awry. I just didn’t find it very plausible or more importantly riveting. There are too many coincidences and lucky bounces to be believable. Also at 700 pages the novel could use a little editing.
One final thing – in his historical note, Mr Sansom goes off on how bad nationalism is and more specifically Scottish Nationalism. I really didn’t see what this had to do with the book and the need to include this rant.
On the whole – the picture of 1952 Britain under the Nazi thumb is very well done, the spy/adventure story line not so effective. I rate this 3.5 rounded down for Goodreads.
November 20, 2012
Can there be two authors writing under the same name? C J Sansom's Shardlake books were evocative adventures with vivid invented characters (the hunchback lawyer, Barak his henchman, Guy the former monk) beside real figures from Tudor England.
C J Sansom's Dominion takes the reader back no further than an imagined May 1940 to postulate Britain after Hitler has won the war. The research, as in the Shardlake series, has been done exhaustively, but here it is plastered on in great slabs that slow down a hugely overblown story. There is no help from the characters who are at best stereotypes, at worst simply unbelievable.
The writing barely rises above the banal. One illustration must serve. "Gunther leaned forward. This man was cocky, but clever too. He said, 'No police or intelligence service is infallible.' He smiled self-deprecatingly. 'Not even ours.'" There are 550 pages like that.
Robert Harris's Fatherland predates the publishing of Dominion by twenty years and sets the bar high. Much too high for Sansom who is at least gracious enough to acknowledge "for me the best alternate history novel ever written."
C J Sansom's Dominion takes the reader back no further than an imagined May 1940 to postulate Britain after Hitler has won the war. The research, as in the Shardlake series, has been done exhaustively, but here it is plastered on in great slabs that slow down a hugely overblown story. There is no help from the characters who are at best stereotypes, at worst simply unbelievable.
The writing barely rises above the banal. One illustration must serve. "Gunther leaned forward. This man was cocky, but clever too. He said, 'No police or intelligence service is infallible.' He smiled self-deprecatingly. 'Not even ours.'" There are 550 pages like that.
Robert Harris's Fatherland predates the publishing of Dominion by twenty years and sets the bar high. Much too high for Sansom who is at least gracious enough to acknowledge "for me the best alternate history novel ever written."
October 8, 2014
I've been a long-time fan of Sansom's Shardlake series but Dominion was a huge disappointment. The plot lacks pace and the characters are dull. This could have been a great book but ultimately it's quite a dull read and I was actually relieved to reach the last page.
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