A Sort Of Traitors

by Nigel Balchin

A gripping story of treachery set in a scientific laboratory in post-war London

Professor Sewell and his biological research team had spent years developing new methods of controlling epidemics. Now a smooth-talking government minister was refusing to let him publish important findings that could benefit the whole of mankind, in case a foreign power put them to more sinister use.

Bob Marriott was bitterly disappointed. Hadn't everyone had a bellyful of distrust, destruction and death in the war that had just ended? Even his attractive colleague Lucy Byrne was one of its casualties, now dedicating her young life to looking after the crippled wreck of a man she had once hoped to marry. Fired by misguided loyalty and manipulated by false friends, Marriott decides to take matters into his own hands - with disastrous consequences.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

Trained originally as an industrial psychologist, in which capacity he helped Rowntree’s to successfully launch Black Magic chocolates in 1933, Nigel Balchin first received critical acclaim as a novelist during the Second World War when he wrote Darkness Falls From the Air. It was the first of three evocative novels (including the smash-hit The Small Back Room) that made good use of his wartime employment experiences at the Ministry of Food and later in the army. This trio was followed by a stream of other fine novels, such as A Sort of Traitors, Sundry Creditors and The Fall of the Sparrow. Balchin diversified into film scriptwriting after the war, winning a BAFTA for his work on The Man Who Never Was and penning what he whimsically described as “the first folio edition of Cleopatra”, being his original (unused) script for the Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor epic. When Balchin died in 1970, at the age of 61, the Guardian anointed him “the novelist of men at work”, a fitting epithet for one of the best fiction writers of the twentieth century.

Reviews

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nigel Balchin of Small Back Room fame once more offers an insight in to the every day nature of government sanctioned science and engineering in the 1940s with this post-war tale of treason. A small independent medical research lab are forced to hand over their research to the government in the name of national security and it would be fair to say that the conflict that arises in each of the team members is what drives this novel, even though it isn't what we have come to know as a thriller, an espionage novel or tale of war. It's once more incredibly understated, not reaching the heights of quality or depths of despair of Small Back Room but all the same a compelling journey told in an intelligent and matter of fact manner.

“If there were any justice," said Shale, "one ought to be allowed to use ardent militarists for experiments in peacetime, if one uses pacifists in war. But I suppose they wouldn't volunteer.”

What I found most interesting was the fact that Balchin deals with themes of pacifism in the direct aftermath of WWII, and the way that conflicted with the growing sense of unease in the face of an impending Cold War. It's not a major discussion but it's a rare popular novel that even attempts to discuss it as a positive choice for individuals and collectives and it underpins everything that happens in A Sort of Traitors. Also of some note is the way all of the male characters spout horrible misogynistic beliefs without being called on it, initially this was quite offensive but then I realised that Balchin was making them all the fools of the piece as his single female character became the lone voice of sense and composure in a sea of idiotic males. Pretty impressive stuff for 1948 I feel.

[Ben Bergonzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1949, this is a brilliant Balchin book, a story of a group of scientists in a London laboratory who identify a clue to the avoidance of epidemics, but (this being the height of the Cold War, with a fear of chemical weapons) the government does not allow them to publish it. The book's structure is ambitious because there is not one leading character, but the focus moves across a range of scientists, politicians, a disabled ex serviceman with the added pain that as an Irishman he need never have gone into the War at all, a secret service man both menacing and comic, and many more. But essentially the protagonists are an old scientist, Professor Sewell, director of the lab, and Bob Marriott the youngest of Sewell's staff, and a man who Sewell first met as an 18 year old undergraduate. Sewell has a dysfunctional family life while Marriott is engaged in a naive pursuit of his one female colleague. Both in their several ways are desperate to circumvent the restrictions placed upon them, even at the price of committing treason. The book's debates between scientists and politicians are immensely topical in this pandemic era, and I was particularly struck by a conversation between Sewell and a government minister called Gatling, a man clearly modelled on those in Attlee's Labour government.
" 'You say,' said Gatling moodily, 'that you'd be prepared to take the chance that this stuff of yours might be used against us in order to give it to the world. Fine So would I. So let's do it and feel feel really big and bold and generous. There there's a war and it comes back at us and kills us. That's all right. We took a gamble and it didn't come off. But it also kills Mrs Jones of Tooting and her cousin Harold. They didn't feel big and bold and generous. They just got killed.'
" 'But surely if government is going to be any good it must take responsibility for doing the right thing', said Sewell. 'You've got to explain to Mrs Jones and Harold what you're doing and why you're doing it.'
"Gatling sighed. 'D'you know what they'd say?' he said wearily. 'They'd say, Go ahead. That's fine. We're all in favour of generosity and boldness. And then, just as you were going out of the door, they'd say, But of of course, mind you, if you take the slightest risk with our safety, you're a scoundrel.' "
This is just a part of a great scene which provides a fascinating illustration of how the certainties of science, and their communication, have to be adjusted in the light of the pragmatics of democratic politics.
Being Balchin, the narrative is advanced by clever people talking to one another. Because they are clever, ironic and allusive, the meanings of their words are not always completely clear at first reading. There are possibly rather too many adverbs, often negative ones as if added because Balchin felt the dialogue he had written was not quite bleak enough for his mood - 'moodily', 'contemptuously,' even 'savagely' and many uses of 'coldly'. The fact is, his dialogue is often warm and funny. Just as it is in real life. His speech is more believable than that in Graham Greene, a writer with an infinitely higher reputation. And one whose books, unlike Balchin's, remain in print. However, do seek this one out from the many online second hand book stores. It is so, so worth it.

[GhostofMyrtle]

Nigel Balchin was an English psychologist and author. As well as writing novels he also wrote screenplays, including scripts for The Man Who Never Was, 23 Steps to Baker Street and Suspect.

A Sort of Traitors (the name is taken from a passage from Shakespeare's Richard II. A biological team has been working for years to develop a new method of controlling epidemics. A government minister blocks them from publishing the work, worried that a foreign power could put them to more sinister uses. Bob Marriott, a young scientist in the team, frustrated that the work could go to waste, is in danger of becoming an enemy of the state.

The book is more psychological than action, which is not surprising given the author's background. Not a bad read but have read better. It was later made into a film (Suspect, with the script by the author).

[CQM · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent book with all of Balchin's usual preoccupations, infidelity, talented professionals being interfered with by bureaucrats and of course bottom slapping. over all though the focus was out a little on this one and the characters where never particularly interesting.
All very fine ideas but without his usual smart, funny/tortured and interesting protagonist.

[Tom Newth · Rating 3 out of 5]

good stuff about good old English scientists trying to be decent in the face of moral uncertainty, solipsism and self-pity, with a sort of espionage story bubbling under (less gripping than the characters; neither, in the end, fully satisfying)

[Althea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, a bit of work. For some reason, or because I read this book little by little, I did not keep the foreshadowing, etc. straight. When I was nearly finished, I turned the book around and quickly read the whole thing again from the start, and then finished it. I liked it better that way.