Julian Rathbone
The Indispensable Julian Rathbone
London: The Do-Not Press / Dufour Editions, 2004. Pp. 460. $36.95 $19.95

Reviewed by Jopi Nyman

The volume makes available for readers a selection of writings by Julian Rathbone (b. 1935), who has published more than thirty books since 1967. While shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize (1976 and 1979), Rathbone has remained outside the conventional canon, perhaps because of his usual choice of popular genres such as the thriller and the historical novel.

Since much of Rathbone's fiction is out of print, this collection is very welcome and reveals new aspects of its author. In addition to selected sections from his key novels, the collection includes a complete novel, Lying in State (1985), poetry (several poems about Sylvia Plath), short fiction, memoirs and travel writings, and reviews and critical essays. It also contains a biography written by the author and a final essay in which the author exposes his anti-hierarchical worldview, stressing the importance of equality and humanism. The volume also lists all of Rathbone's novels and their translations into various languages.

What does Rathbone write about? Regardless of his claims of being a Marxist and a Darwinist, these themes do not form the core of his fiction as such, though the novel Trajectories deals with the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, and the erotic short story "All about Eve" can be read in terms of evolutionary discourse. Politics is often present in his thrillers, but it does not necessarily promote radical solutions-Rathbone is too individualist to celebrate a single cause. While embedded in the political, the thriller Lying in State (set in Spain amidst the death and funeral of General Franco), which connects its characters to the Peronists and the circles of Nazi refugees hiding in South America, remains unable to provide a radical solution. Instead, it ends in showing the main characters embarking upon a new life, free from financial worries and persecution. This, of course, is a more general dilemma concerning radicalism in a popular genre aiming at the mass market-as detective fiction shows, social critique is not necessarily radical. Lying in State, as its genre demands, prefers the individual and the family, not the collective and the social, and shows how the author is to some extent limited by the form he has chosen to work in.

However, of the many themes explored in the collection (travel, history, eroticism, moral and national values), Rathbone is most effective as a rewriter of history. This is where he has found his niche, as shown in his recent bestsellers, of which the reader finds several sections: The Last English King (1997) rewrites the history of the Norman Conquest as a European invasion; Kings of Albion (2000) focuses on the War of the Roses from the perspective of Indian and Arab visitors to Britain; and A Very English Agent (2002) shows its main character spying on German exiles including Karl Marx and ends in the funeral of the Duke of Wellington (who figures in several of Rathbone's novels). What is innovative in these novels is that Rathbone unashamedly rewrites historical events and figures, and includes contemporary references in his anachronistic narratives. While cleverly planned and enjoyable for readers familiar with history, some of these novels can also be read as narratives of English exceptionalism and national identity. The Last English King, for example, is at one level an allegory of Britain's ambiguous relationship with Europe and the European Union in particular. However, this is why it succeeds so well as popular fiction, working on the current ideological atmosphere and transforming that into fiction.

This many-sided collection will surely recruit new readers for Rathbone. It shows that his mastery of storytelling has several layers and takes several forms. It also shows how popular genres can be used to explore questions of history and politics in many unpredictable ways.