That Was Hugo Blythe MP

Seasoned literary craftsman Peter Cowlam presents us with the unexpurgated diary of Alaric Casteele. Casteele, an acid, aloof intellectual at odds with his teaching job, has as a ‘last ditch’ agreed to work as researcher for Hugo Blythe, who heads up New Labour’s so-called ‘Ministry of Cult’. Through the whisperings of Westminster, Alaric discovers something is afoot. People in the department are briefing against Hugo, but Hugo begins to think that Alaric is the culprit. Casteele turns to electronic skulduggery in order to find out who really is behind the attacks, drip-fed to the press. He writes his diary in a concentrated aestheticised style, as we pay close attention and read between the lines. Love him or hate him, Alaric – in reality a small-c conservative, a sort of enemy within – reinvigorates a forgotten Zeitgeist, and an era pre-dating ‘#Me Too’. But is Casteele’s diary all that is left of Blairite Britain and its milieu as disillusion deepens? Peter Cowlam’s magnificent achievement is to create a character whose glancing passage through the ‘Ministry of Cult’ mirrors a complex world of moral ambiguity and disaffection. That Was Hugo Blythe MP is a compressed, unblinking portrayal of a politics consumed by intrigue, where value placed on celebrity outbids anything else.