The Allegations
Mark Lawson
Picador, £16.99
Review by Mark Smith
THERE’S horror at the heart of Mark Lawson’s novel The Allegations and it begins with the sound of a doorbell and police officers on the doorstep. Has there been an accident? A car crash? Has someone been killed? Not quite. The policeman is reciting an official sentence that he’s used many times before: “I am arresting you on suspicion of a sexual offence.”
A short while later, the man who’s been arrested, a wealthy TV historian called Ned Marriott, is in a police cell, which he notices is about the size of the downstairs loo in one of his homes. “Being imprisoned for the first time was like an initial sight of New York,” he observes, “a series of moments known from movies.” The stark toilet in the corner. The viewing panel. The steel door.
The horror of this unfamiliar situation is well realised, although Lawson’s book rests on a more sophisticated idea: what if, in this post-Savile world in which the police investigate “historic” sex crimes, one of those accused is himself a historian? Suddenly, a man schooled in sources and evidence has to look at the history of himself, however difficult that is. “The average man, woman, can’t fill in a questionnaire on who did what to whom on a random night when Margaret Thatcher was leader of the opposition,” says Marriott.
In the novel’s other main strand, the professor’s colleague, Tom Pimm, faces a similar problem although he has been accused of different offences: bullying and insubordination. Like Marriott, he realises that apparently benign moments in his life are suddenly open to interpretation, misinterpretation and accusation, although he believes he’s guilty of nothing more than the odd sarcastic comment. What’s more, he believes he and Marriott are victims of hysteria. “Some countries have typhoid,” says Pimm. “We have moral fever.”
The context of all of this is obvious. After the Savile affair, famous people have been investigated over allegations of sexual offences from the past. The accusations of bullying against Pimm also have a real precedent in Thomas Docherty, a professor at the University of Warwick who was suspended in 2014 after being accused, like Pimm, of sarcastic comments and “inappropriate sighing”.
There is also a precedent in Mark Lawson himself who stepped down from the Radio 4 programme Front Row two years ago after he was accused of bullying. At the time, Lawson said there were editorial arguments and nothing more, and in the afterword of his novel says he was a victim of institutional group-think and a surreal, sub-legal process. However, he also specifically says that The Allegations is not a roman a clef and that the narrative and characters are fictional.
That may be so, but it’s clear Lawson’s experiences have seeped into the novel and affected its atmosphere as well as its central warning that the pendulum has swung too far from “innocent until proven guilty” to “guilty until proven innocent”. Looking at recent events, that’s a perfectly fair point although as the novel progresses it’s hard to shake the concern that the story is told almost entirely from the accused’s point of view – Professor Marriott’s “victims”/accusers do appear but only briefly.
Perhaps this was Lawson’s intention: to keep us uncertain whether Pimm and Marriott are guilty, and perhaps their guilt or innocence is irrelevant anyway. What matters more is Lawson’s central contention that we have moved away from properly testing guilt or innocence and have ended up unquestioningly accepting accusations. In the words of Marriot, because Jimmy Savile dodged a bullet, the police are now shooting people at random.
Lawson presents this argument in a subtle and thoughtful novel, although he does end it with the terribly downbeat, but perfectly reasonable, suggestion that the situation is unlikely to change as long as the internet exists. The complexity and subtlety needed to properly assess an accusation of misbehaviour, he suggests, will always be drowned out by the simplicity and stupidity of Twitter. In the last chapter, for example, Professor Marriott tries to explain his case, but as he does so a succession of hashtags builds up on a screen behind him starting with #thisguyshistory and ending with one simple word, repeated over and over again: #history.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here