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C. J. Sansom was educated at Birmingham University, where he took a BA and then a Ph.D. in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, until becoming a full-time writer. He is the bestselling author of the acclaimed Shardlake series, and the Spanish Civil War thriller Winter in Madrid. He lives in Sussex.
‘C. J. Sansom takes a break from his Shardlake series to offer
Dominion, an absorbing, thoughtful, spy-politico thriller set in
the fog-ridden London of 1952. Not, however, the year as it is
usually remembered. Sansom has attempted a difficult format — the
“what if?” novel. What if, in 1940, Lord Halifax became prime
minister instead of Churchill? Britain would have made peace with
Hitler, Sansom answers, and by 1952 become a totalitarian state,
with Germany, acting as puppet-master rather than invader, setting
the scene. Churchill, in hiding, is leader of a resistance
movement, to which the hero of Dominion, David Fitzgerald, a civil
servant hiding his Jewishness, belongs. Part adventure, part
espionage, all encompassed by terrific atmosphere and a well-argued
“it might have been”’ Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘An intriguing thriller set in an alternative Britain under the
Nazis cunningly reanimates the post-war years as they might have
been . . . What if the second world war had ended not in 1945, but
in 1940? In this haunting, vividly imagined novel by C. J. Sansom,
the hinge on which history turns is the resignation of Neville
Chamberlain in May 1940. . . As in the Shardlake novels, set in
Tudor England, for which he is best known, Sansom is an admirably
expansive and unhurried storyteller. His characters are all given
personal histories and richly detailed pasts that serve to provide
them with a depth more usually associated with literary fiction
than the thriller. Their conversations do more than just drive
forward the plot: they help to give substance and reality to the
world they inhabit. The alternative Britain that Sansom constructs,
a brilliant amalgam of the 1950s as they actually were and as they
might have been, is entirely convincing. Throwaway details cleverly
add verisimilitude to his portrait. The tale he sets within his
parallel universe is at once exciting, sophisticated and moving.
There will be few better historical novels published this year’
Sunday Times
‘This is a big novel with traces of a thriller, in which the good
are good and the bad are very bad indeed . . . For readers who
enjoy a grown-up adventure story Dominion is evocative, alarming
and richly satisfying’ Daily Express
‘Masterly . . . sketched with hallucinatory clarity . . . Sansom,
whose Tudor mysteries showed his feeling for the plight of good
people in a brutal, treacherous society, builds his nightmare
Britain from the sooty bricks of truth . . . From the thuggish
"Auxies" who beat up protestors to the apolitical rebellion of the
"Jive Boys", every note in Sansom's smoggy hell rings true . . .No
bulldog defiance in 1940; no weary triumph in 1945; no dogged
renewal with the post-war Welfare State: Dominion shows us what a
truly broken Britain would look, and feel, like’ Boyd Tonkin,
Independent
‘A thriller which is also, and perhaps primarily, a work of
alternative or counter-factual history, set in 1952 . . . in the
manner of Robert Harris’s Fatherland. There are fine things
a-plenty here, and the plot unfolds compellingly and gallops along
briskly. C. J. Sansom has brought off a nice double, writing a good
thriller which invites you to ponder the different course history
might have taken’ Allan Massie, Scotsman
‘C. J. Sansom is fascinated by the abuse of power, so it's not
surprising that, hot on the heels of his splendid Shardlake series,
comes a novel set in a post-war Britain dominated by Nazi ideology
. . . There have been a number of other novels imagining this kind
of alternate history – Robert Harris's Fatherland, Owen Sheers'
Resistance, Len Deighton's SS-GB and, for children, Sally Gardner's
Maggot Moon. All are outstanding in different ways but Sansom's
Dominion is the most thoroughly imagined in all its ramifications.
Like Harris, Sansom has woven a thriller with the tale of a man's
growth into moral courage, but he has done it with the compassion
and richness that many literary writers should emulate. Every
detail of this nightmare Britain rings true . . . As in Sansom's
Winter in Madrid, the clash between compassion and political
conviction is dramatised. David's looks and talent make him as
freakish in his way as frail, disabled Frank, and the friendship
between someone who can survive institutions and someone who cannot
is one of the most affecting aspects of the novel . . . Naturally,
the weather is awful, and obliges with a choking, oily fog as our
heroes battle against hideous odds to get to safety. But both as a
historical novel and a thriller, Dominion is absorbing, mordant and
written with a passionate persuasiveness . . . Bravo!’ Independent
on Sunday
‘Fans of Robert Harris will love this’ Mail on Sunday
‘The chase is exciting and the action thrilling, but the really
absorbing part of this excellent book is the detailed creation of a
society that could so easily have existed’ Literary Review
‘One of the thrills of Dominion is to see a writer whose previous
talent has been for the captivating dramatisation of real history
(in his five books about the Tudor sleuth, Matthew Shardlake, and
the Spanish civil war novel Winter in Madrid) creating an invented
mid-20th century Britain that has the intricate detail and
delineation of JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth . . .A tremendous novel
that shakes historical preconceptions while also sending shivers
down the spine’ Mark Lawson, Guardian
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