Book Review – Green Ink by Stephen May

About the Book

David Lloyd George is at Chequers for the weekend with his mistress Frances Stevenson, fretting about the fact that his involvement in selling public honours is about to be revealed by one Victor Grayson. Victor is a bisexual hedonist and former firebrand socialist MP turned secret-service informant. Intent on rebuilding his profile as the leader of the revolutionary Left, he doesn’t know exactly how much of a hornet’s nest he’s stirred up. Doesn’t know that this is, in fact, his last day.

No one really knows what happened to Victor Grayson – he vanished one night in late September 1920, having threatened to reveal all he knew about the prime minister’s involvement in selling honours. Was he murdered by the British government? By enemies in the socialist movement (who he had betrayed in the war)? Did he fall in the Thames drunk? Did he vanish to save his own life, and become an antiques dealer in Kent?

Whatever the truth, Green Ink imagines what might have been with brio, humour and humanity; and is a reminder that the past was once as alive as we are today.

Format: Hardback (288 pages) Publisher: Swift Press
Publication date: 13th March 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

As in the author’s very enjoyable book, Sell Us The Rope, which concerned the young Stalin’s visit to London in May 1907, Green Ink is based on a real historical event, namely the disappearance of Victor Grayson on 28th September 1920. The circumstances of his disappearance remain unknown to this day and have been the subject of much speculation over the years. This is the author’s imagined answer to the mystery.

Told over the course of the day of Victor’s disappearance, the book gives the reader a vivid insight into a man who lived life on the edge – a drink, drug and sex-fuelled edge. The author assembles a cast of people who might have had reason to welcome Victor’s disappearance. These include Prime Minister David Lloyd George, fearful Victor may reveal his involvement in corruption, a spurned former lover and someone who has very personal reasons to resent Victor’s volte-face from passionate opponent of Britain’s entry into the First World War to enthusiastic advocate. And perhaps the memoir Victor is writing might disclose information the British government would rather remained secret. (Behind the scenes they’re doing quite a lot of information gathering themselves.)

This is London in the aftermath of the First World War and its consequences are graphically depicted. As Victor follows his fellow drinkers – ‘sad-eyed men and their long-suffering friends’ – out of a pub into the streets of London he sees ‘men muttering to themselves or hopping through the damp fog on crutches’. The streets are populated by ‘the blind, the crippled, the halt and the traumatised. Men chanting softly to themselves like so many confused monks.’ There is one particularly memorable scene in a cinema which brings home the devastation war can wreak on the human body.

I loved some of the character descriptions such as this one of actor and theatre producer Maundy Gregory. ‘He’d be an impressive figure if it didn’t look like subsidence was affecting his face, cheeks and jowls slithering to wards a flabby neck like a slow-moving mudslide.’

The book contains some explicit sex scenes which I found a little too anatomical to be erotic. There is also quite a bit of swearing which didn’t bother me but might some readers. On the other hand, there’s an infectious wit and verve about the writing which makes the book highly entertaining.

The circumstances of Victor’s disappearance, as imagined by the author, are dramatic but have an element of poetic justice. Of course, it doesn’t claim to be the truth and in a clever sleight of hand we learn exactly why that might not be the case. Oh, and the book’s title? ‘Everyone knows only the security services use green ink for their memoranda.’

I received a review copy courtesy of Swift Press.

In three words: Clever, witty, engrossing
Try something similar: Precipice by Robert Harris

About the Author

Stephen May is the author of six novels including Life! Death! Prizes! which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and The Guardian Not The Booker Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year and is a winner of the Media Wales Reader’s Prize. He has also written plays, as well as for television and film. He lives in West Yorkshire.

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