C. P. Snow

Review: George Passant

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "George Passant" by C. P. Snow

George Passant

George Passant (Strangers and Brothers, 2) C. P. Snow Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9781504096966) 2024, first published 1940.

Summary: A charismatic young solicitor gathers a group of mentees. Business schemes with two others lead to fraud charges.

“And so with the others of George’s group … George had set us moving, lent us money: he never seemed to think twice of lending us money … It was the first time we had been near to a generous-hearted man. We became excited over the books he told us to read and the views he stood by … We were carried away by his belief in human beings and ourselves.“

And so we are introduced to the central character, George Passant, of the second of C.P. Snow’s “Strangers and Brothers” series, held together by its narrator, Lewis Eliot, whose career we trace in the course of the series. [The novel is actually the first to be written and carried the title Strangers and Brothers until Snow developed the series, using that for the series name and retitling this book after its main character.]

George Passant is the charismatic young solicitor, working as the manging clerk of Eden and Martineau, a law firm in a small town. Beginning in the 1920’s, he gathered a group of students from a nearby school where he was a lecturer, including Lewis Eliot. He was generous with his ideas, his funds, and his support of their budding careers. He was also profligate in sexual matters, both with some women in the group as well as prostitutes. The group gathers at cafes, in each others’ flats, and overnights at a farm they rent out.

One of the group, Jack Cotery, became his special cause. Cotery is an apprentice at a newspaper. The publisher’s son, Roy Calvert, develops a crush on Jack. Therefore, when father finds out, he withdraws support for printers’ training at the college. George responds with outrage, and against the counsel of friends, defends Jack with the scholarship board. He wins a partial victory but makes enemies and undermines his prospects to advance to partner at Eden and Martineau.

However, he persists with the group, and gives Jack as much support as he can as Cotery undertakes various business ventures. We’re now into the 1930’s. Eliot’s career has taken off in London. But Jack and George are still back in small town England. George has aspirations for so much more, financially and with the group, where his life is. Jack brings him an opportunity to do that. Martineau has had a religious awakening and not only is selling off his interest in the firm, but an ad agency with an advertising newspaper that is his side hustle. He overstates the circulation, and because of his reputation, no one questions the numbers.

Olive Calvert, Roy’s sister, who is in a relationship with Jack, also joins the effort. They recruit investors and the business flourishes sufficiently to consider a second venture. They decide to acquire the farm, both for the use of the group and as a hostel. All is going well until one of the investors accuses them of fraud based on the advertising newspaper’s inflated circulation figures. Eliot, becomes their lawyer, and at the insistence of Eden, becomes co-counsel with his old supervisor, Herbert Getliffe.

Not only is some of the evidence indicative of intent to defraud. Both testimony, and a diary of George’s reveal compromising moral goings-on, for which the farm provided cover. All this leads Eliot to reassess his mentor. A good part of the book covers the preparation for and trial of the three.

Reading this book made me think of C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and particularly the phrase “men without chests.” Lewis used this to describe the debilitating effect of moral relativism on intelligent and ambitious people:

“You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful” [The Abolition of Man (New York: Touchstone, 1996), p. 37].

This is an apt description of the people we meet in George Passant. They do not lack in intelligence, sophistication, charisma, or drive. There is competence without character. They seem to live in a world where all is gray. It’s a world lacking in color. And yet, Snow offers a fascinating exploration of a group of people navigating just such a world.

Review: The New Men

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "The New Men" by C.P. Snow

The New Men (Strangers and Brothers, 6) C. P. Snow. Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9781504097000) 2024 (First published in 1954).

Summary: The tension between two brothers involved in nuclear weapons research during and after World War 2 in England.

Between 1940 and 1970, C. P. Snow wrote eleven “Strangers and Brothers” novels narrated by Lewis Eliot, who rises from an attorney to a Cambridge don, and finally a senior civil servant in government. The novels explore power in the political context and the challenge of maintaining personal integrity. Recently, Open Road has reissued the series in e-book format. In this case, their efforts brought to my attention a book as old as I am. Yet the questions it explores have been those many of us have wrestle with through all our lives. Can nuclear weapons and the arms race be morally justified?

Lewis assists his brother Martin, a physicist, in obtaining a position in a highly secret research program at Barford, the fictional site of England’s atomic research program during World War 2. He will work under Walter Luke in building an atomic pile. This is the first step in creating fissionable material for a bomb.

The novel works at several levels. One is a fictional narrative that captures the rivalry as well as cooperation of the British and Americans to build a bomb before Germany did. Snow narrates setbacks such as failures in activating the nuclear pile, and later, a near fatal accident involving Luke and Sawbridge. In part, because of these failures, the Americans build and use the bomb. But, in an effort to preserve Britain’s place in the world, they win continued support to build Britain’s own nuclear arsenal.

The second level is an exploration of the moral issues. Like some of the scientists at Los Alamos, the scientific challenge to build the bomb was separate from the idea that it might actually be used. The effects of radiation exposure on Luke and Sawbridge underscore the particular horror of radioactive fallout. Snow portrays ineffectual efforts to prevent the American use of the bomb. Also, the advantage of the West grates on Sawbridge and others, who provide information to the Soviets. In fact, it did not make an appreciable difference.

Finally the novel develops a tension between the two brothers. Lewis wants his brother’s success, which becomes a burden to Martin, who must struggle with his own ambitions and his brother’s expectations, whether in marriage or career. Then moral issues arise between the more pragmatic Lewis and idealistic Martin. First, they arise over going public in opposition to the bomb. Later, Lewis disagrees with Martin’s aggressive role in the prosecution of Sawbridge.

All this occurs against a backdrop of relational networks of Cambridge dons and Whitehall officials. These offer a glimpse of the alliance between academy and government, like the pipeline from Harvard into Washington during the “Best and the Brightest” years. Yet despite power and influence we see human flaws that undermine ambitions and aspirations, even between brothers.

Review: Corridors of Power

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "Corridors of Power" by C. P. Snow

Corridors of Power (Strangers and Brothers, 9), C. P. Snow. Open Road Media (ASIN: B0DCPBFBZT) 2024 (first published in 1964).

Summary: An ambitious member of Parliament challenges Britain’s nuclear policy in the aftermath of the Suez crisis.

The phrase “corridors of power” has come into common political parlance. And it is C.P. Snow we have to thank for this. However, its use in the title of this novel was not its first. Rather, it occurs in an earlier novel Homecomings published in 1956. Both this and the earlier novel are part of Snow’s Strangers and Brothers series, written between 1940 and 1970. The novels narrate the education and career of civil servant, Lewis Eliot. This mirrors C. P. Snows own career, first as a physical chemist, turned civil servant, and later as a director of several science and technology organizations.

Eliot is serving an elderly cabinet minister at the opening of the novel, who is displaced, ostensibly due to ill health, by rising star Roger Quaife. Eliot continues to serve under him and is drawn into his ambitious, yet coldly realistic policy goals for the U.K. During this time, the country has come through the Suez Crisis, an episode revealing their declining power. Rather than to attempt to keep up pretenses, Quaife wants the U.K. to end its participation in the nuclear arms race, leaving it to the two rival superpowers. Much of the novel develops the efforts to politically sell this policy. Eliot’s role is to chair a committee of scientists to make recommendations about the policy. Quaife wants their endorsement, and all but a dissenting scientist get the message.

Eliot has another role to play as well. Quaife has the perfect political marriage, with a glamorous and influential wife (who is a good friend of Eliot’s wife). We follow them in the rounds of parties with rich and influential friends. But Quaife also is involved in an affair on the side. Eliot becomes involved when Quaife’s lover begins receiving letters threatening to expose the affair if Quaife doesn’t end it.

The novel builds toward twin crises as Quaife faces a political vote of confidence amid growing dissent over his proposed policy and his wife’s ultimatum to Quaife to end the affair. He has dazzled with his consummate political skills. But will that be enough to carry him through these crises?

The novel serves as a commentary on the U.K.’s relative waning power, yet is far ahead of the times. As of 2025, the U.K. is still a nuclear power and significant NATO partner. Whether it was Snow’s intent, it also seemed a commentary on the vacuity of political power. Indeed, I wondered whether Quaife’s affair was the one thing of meaning, of real humanity in a life taken up with ambition and power.

I think I only knew of Snow through his book The Two Cultures describing the breakdown of communication between the sciences and humanities. I came across this work as a deal in e-book format, not realizing it was part of a series. Even though it was the ninth in the series, it reads well as a standalone. I just might try a few more!