Well known for his social satire on British law and jurisprudence — represented by his famous character Horace Rumpole, the crotchety barrister of the Old Bailey — the novelist John Mortimer now ranks as one of Great Britain’s premier mystery writers.
He also has, however, a flair for political tales, and his most popular creation has been Lord Leslie Titmuss, the beloved First Baron Skurfield. Titmuss — a longtime Tory MP for Hartscombe and Worsfield South — was Minister for Housing, Ecological Affairs and Planning (or HEAP) back in the Tories’ glory days. He rose to great power in the Thatcher years, and his love for the Iron Lady remains intact.
Mortimer built Lord Titmuss in two previous novels, Paradise Postponed (1985) and Titmuss Regained (1990). Both books showed a complex man, well connected and well respected in Tory circles, revered and feared at the same time. And in The Sound of Trumpets, the newly published conclusion to the political trilogy, Mortimer surpasses even the expectations raised by his previous installments. For those of us who have been waiting, the book will stand as Mortimer’s great triumph.
The Sound of Trumpets gives a different twist to political campaigning. After Titmuss retires and moves on to the House of Lords, he is replaced by a Tory, Peter Millichip. But when Millichip is found dead in his swimming pool, the victim of an apparent heart attack, a new by-election is called. And it’s here, in the midst of the back-stabbing campaign, that the novel’s fun begins.
The Tories choose former MP Tim Willock as their candidate. But when the local party chairman brings him along to meet the cagey Titmuss, he insultingly assumes that Titmuss will endorse him: The district had voted Tory for decades, and the added threat of the Labour party and its socialist policies should be plenty to turn the old man’s stomach.
But how little Willock actually knows. For Titmuss is still furious at the Tories for their revolt against Thatcher. After meeting Willock — who holds a weak position on the death penalty and admits to weakly supporting Thatcher’s opposition during the coup — Titmuss decides that he can’t support the Tory candidate. And so he devises an incredible scheme to force the Tories back to their principles and, incidentally, to defeat Willock — by giving advice and guidance to the young Labour candidate, Terry Flitton.
Mortimer introduces Flitton as a kind of Tony Blair clone, who, like the real prime minister, was born in a Tory household. But unlike Blair, Flitton has a history with the Young Socialists at the university and seems comfortable with the left-wing ranks of Labour. But he’s also young and obviously impressionable, and just right for Titmuss to exploit.
In the first meeting between Titmuss and Flitton, the young Labourite is insecure and idealistic, the old Tory confident and conniving. Titmuss doesn’t care if Flitton was a “Maoist Revisionist Anti-Rat Hunting Candidate for Free Love and Acupuncture,” he just wants a winner. And he responds to Flitton’s mild reminder of the difference between Tory and Labour with a wild flurry:
Are you suggesting that little traitor Willock, that damp, fawning, Europe-loving git whose true occupation is selling strings of onions off a French bicycle, that three-legged coward who stood with his dagger out during the assassination of the greatest Leader we ever had, his hand shaking and afraid to strike, that vacillating voice of the Prime Minister’s movement for mediocrity, belongs to my party? I tell you this honestly, young man. . . . To call Timothy Willock a member of my Party is to throw mud in the face of Margaret Thatcher.
For Titmuss, politics is “simply about winning.” Flitton counters by trying to defend his theory that politics “is about beliefs.” But the elder statesman quickly browbeats the young politician with the claim that socialist ideals never put into practice are little more than “pure emotional self-indulgence.” If Flitton really wants socialism, he not only has to beat Willock, but also has to avoid the word “socialism” from start to finish in his campaign. And so the Tory and the Labourite forge a strange and secret alliance as the race heats up and takes a series of unpredictable turns.
Flitton continues his transformation from bleeding-heart socialist to New Labourite. The constant brushstrokes of the influential Titmuss can be found all over Flitton’s canvas. He gets, for example, the young Labourite up on a horse at the Hartscombe fox hunt, after the Tory Willock reveals his disdain for blood sports and his promise to ban them if elected to office. This event is reported by the local newspaper, much to the repulsion of Flitton’s young and beautiful wife, Kate, who abhors all carnivores, smokers, and hunters:
“You mean, you sat there and watched while the dogs ate an animal?”
“Quite honestly, darling. There was very little I could do about it.”
“You didn’t protest? You didn’t shout at those murdering bastards?”
“You mean the dogs, or the people?”
“Both!” Her voice rang in anger. “Of course I mean both!”
Driven by the fury at home, Flitton ends up in an extramarital affair with the older and wiser Agnes Simcox, owner of a socialist bookshop. Developing from flirtation into passion, their relationship reveals Mortimer’s talent for political irony: the Old Labour Agnes trying to sway the New Labour Flitton with all her charms and knowledge before her time has passed.
But the influence of the wily old Tory remains too strong. Sleuthing about, Titmuss discovers the real reason for Millichip’s death — a heart-stopping orgasm via partial strangulation while wearing a leopard-skin bikini and handcuffs. He also finds out that “Slippy” Johnson, a juvenile in the Skurfield Young Offenders’ Institution had been asked to pick the locks by Millichip’s wife, Linda, and by the party chairman before the police arrived.
With this information in hand — which, in a complicated whipsaw, will redound to the Tories’ benefit — Titmuss forces Flitton to reveal to the press a secret that his lover Agnes has given him in confidence. It is, of course, the ultimate betrayal of Old Labour. But with victory in sight, Flitton succumbs to the Titmuss thesis: Politics is only about winning.
Perhaps the novel’s highpoint comes when Titmuss finally reveals in public — on election night at a meeting of the Tory faithful in Hartscombe — his rejection of Willock for the coup against Thatcher. Titmuss’s speech is hardly the one typically heard at a political rally:
And which stones should we cast away? Those that pelted our Great Leader! My friends. It’s a time to speak, and a time to speak plainly, because there is a time to get and a time to lose. And, in all honesty, I suggest that this is a time to lose!
The surprising after-results of the election are not the only twist in this concluding volume of the Titmuss trilogy. Though critical of politics in general — as he is of all things that are impure — John Mortimer manages to describe the modern British political landscape as a great and hilarious battle of wills and wits. In The Sound of Trumpets, he has spun a brilliant tale of deception, deceit, betrayal, and intrigue. A brilliant tale of politics, in other words.
Michael Taube is a columnist for the Hamilton Spectator in Canada.
