However, it was inspired by some aspects of the life of Melinda Marling, the wife of Donald Maclean. As such it stands on the shoulders of a number of books about the Cambridge spies and occasionally borrows directly from the historical record, particularly around Donald’s defection in 1951, when he left the family house at Tatsfield with his friend and fellow spy Guy Burgess, leaving behind his pregnant wife, Melinda.
A few times the real words of historical characters are very closely echoed by the characters in this book; for instance, what Alistair writes about Edward in this novel is very close to what Cyril Connolly wrote about Donald Maclean in The Missing Diplomats; the telegram Edward sends to Laura is almost the same as the telegram that Melinda received from Donald, and the letter that appears in the press about Laura’s treatment is almost identical to the letter written by Violet Bonham-Carter to The Times about Melinda.
Laura also comes into contact with some real writers’ work which I have quoted verbatim; she reads Harry Pollitt’s Will It Be War? before going to a party, she reads George Orwell’s ‘Inside the Whale’ in a café in London when trying to find a convincing reason to leave the Communist Party, and she and Edward both read Tchernavin’s I Speak for the Silent. The article she reads on the Normandie appeared in the British Daily Worker in August 1939, while a joke made by Edward about Native Americans was made by Beverley Nichols and is found in his book Uncle Samson.
Aside from these direct quotations, I am grateful to all those who have written about the Cambridge spies, particularly Phillip Knightley, Ben Macintyre, Geoffrey Hoare and Yuri Modin, whose work has helped me to imagine those strange times. I am also grateful to a number of books about communism in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly About Turn: the British Communist Party and the Second World War, edited by Francis King and George Matthews; to those writers such as Philip Ziegler, Matthew Sweet and Juliet Gardiner who helped me to imagine London in the Blitz; as well as those historians and memoirists from Alger Hiss to Whittaker Chambers whose work gives insight into McCarthyite America.
I am grateful to Katharine Viner, who as editor of Weekend magazine at the Guardian published my feature article on the women in the Cambridge spy ring, which first encouraged me to track down all I could about Melinda Marling, the communist in the Schiaparelli coat.
But this is not a history book, and I apologise in advance to readers who may be irritated by my inaccuracies and inventions. It is fiction above all in one central respect: there is not a shred of evidence that Melinda Marling ever participated in espionage. It has now transpired that she knew about Donald’s double life before she married him, and supported him up to and beyond his defection, but everything in this book to do with Laura’s own secret life is complete invention.
This book has been a while in the making, and I would like to thank all those who kept me smiling during the trickier moments. Thank you particularly to Harriet Gugenheim, who helped me stay on track, and to Maggie Baxter, who as chair of Women for Refugee Women enabled me to take the sabbatical that allowed me to complete the first draft. Thank you to Rebecca Gowers, Linda Grant, Don Guttenplan and Robert Winder who read and commented on drafts, and to my mother Ruth Walter and my sister Susannah Brunert. Thank you too to my agents Derek Johns and Anna Webber at United Agents who took me through this journey on relays. Thank you to Katie Espiner who brought me to HarperCollins, and to Kate Elton, Suzie Dooré, Charlotte Cray, Ann Bissell and Cassie Browne.
And to Mark Lattimer, Clara and Arthur, for all the love and loyalty and laughter, thank you.
About the Author
Natasha Walter is the author of two non-fiction books, The New Feminism and Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. She has worked as a journalist, columnist and reviewer for the Guardian, the Observer and the Independent, and is the founder of the charity Women for Refugee Women. She lives in London with her partner and their two children. A Quiet Life is her first novel.