High Dive - Jonathan Lee

On 12th October 1984, a bomb was detonated at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, on the eve of Margaret Thatcher’s speech to the Conservative Party conference. The Prime Minister escaped unscathed, but five were killed, and thirty one seriously injured. An IRA man named Patrick Magee was arrested for his role in the events – it is believed that he had an accomplice, who has never been identified. The third novel by author Jonathan Lee, High Dive is an attempt to examine the events of that night through fiction.

Like the 2006 Emilio Estavez film Bobby, which detailed the events leading to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy from the perspectives of kitchen staff, hotel doormen and others, High Dive looks at the build up to the Brighton bombing, and its immediate aftermath, from the point of view of minor, fictional, participants: primarily Philip ‘Moose’ Finch, the deputy manager of the Grand, his daughter Freya, and Dan, the IRA man sent to assist the primary bomber. By doing so, Lee balances the political and the personal within his narrative.

It is easy to see why a writer would look back to the 1980s for a story with contemporary parallels. A protestor outside the Grand on the eve of the conference talks about 'the unemployment and the money wasted on sham wars and the massive divide between rich and poor and all the fancy people in London and then people without any food up north and... the total lack of interest in trying to soothe the racial tensions in our community': a speech which could be recreated word for word in a modern context. 1984 marks a key stage in the development of modern Britain, the point at which consensus surrounding the welfare state and the role of government began to shift towards the laissez-faire economic situation we have today.

After a tentative start, Thatcher is becoming increasingly assertive, following the Falklands War, and a recognisably ‘Thatcherite’ political philosophy is being pursued. At the time of the bombing, there is still some doubt over whether she will be successful – the Miners’ Strike is at its peak, and conference guests are overheard predicting electoral defeat 'unless the lady can pull something extraordinary out of the bag'. It is the explosion, and its immediate aftermath, which will cement her position.

The Grand itself becomes a character in Lee’s narrative. Redolent of the old order, the fabric is beginning to tear, worn down by 'one hunded and twenty years of stinging drizzle, of corrosive sunshine, of the salty gales and acidic bird shit it is every coastal town's cross to bear'. The hotel’s typical guests ('chaps' or 'fellows', with 'soft, outdated faces') are representative of a generation on its way out, out of kilter with the ‘excessive’ culture of the mid-Eighties. 

The Brighton-based section of the novel is split between Moose and Freya. A sports star at school, excelling in everything from sprinting to cricket to diving, Moose has settled into a mediocre middle age. Divorced from his wife, his aspirations are limited to getting the soon-to-be vacant General Manager’s job at The Grand (securing the booking for the party conference is key to achieving this goal) and sending Freya to university. Freya herself is unsure whether she wants to go or not, but her immediate thoughts are dominated by a prospective relationship with her colleague Surfer John, and her friendship with Susie, who is leaning on her to leave a door unlocked on the night of the conference so that protesters can get in to let a stink bomb off.

In Belfast, meanwhile, we follow Dan, an electrician who has been recruited by the IRA to assist with bombings. While his induction, and overall relationship with his handler, is very well written, the reader is drawn in by the everyday details of his life; the problems of being the sole Catholic on a Protestant street, and dealing with his elderly mother. It is to escape this that he is drawn to the Republican movement: 'on an operation you felt clean of guilt and will. It was day-to-day Belfast life that made you dirty. The nowness of being undercover, the sprint of adrenaline in your blood. It seemed to have a purifying quality'. He is promised 'if you were in on this operation, you'd be the luckiest man alive. Go down in history'.

Of Thatcher herself, we see little; like Alan Hollinghurst in The Line of Beauty, Lee confines her to a brief but memorable cameo. On her arrival at the Grand on the night before the conference, she is surrounded by a scrum of photographers and aides; all Moose can catch is 'a pair of shoes that could be hers, the hem of a tweed skirt, the wrinkled bend of a waistband'.

As the novel progresses towards its inevitable climax, Lee ensures that the personal drama is every bit as engaging as the political events – the reader is fully emotionally engaged with the characters. By blending fiction with fact, the author retains a strong sense of tension: although we know a bomb will go off, we do not know what the impact will be for Moose, Freya or Dan. From a publicity point of view the timing of High Dive probably couldn’t be worse, but in the light of the Paris attacks a novel which examines the personal stories behind political and religious violence is both poignant and relevant. Brave, gripping and well-paced, High Dive is well worth reading.