C. P. Snow

Review: The New Men

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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

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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!