The most important thing I’ve changed is no real change, it’s something that just happens – time gets compressed. The plot of this novel takes from May to October 1959. In particular the weeks of August and September get telescoped. Ike’s visit began on 27 August and lasted ten days. The Wartime Reunion is real enough but was given by Ike rather than for him, at the US Embassy. The next day when Ike had left Macmillan announced the General Election. Parliament was dissolved ten days later and the election held on 8 October – the first I can remember in any detail, and in which I delivered countless leaflets on behalf of a now defunct party that got hijacked by the talking suits in the 1990s, who, at the time of writing, have just led us into a third war in six years. (I had thought nothing would ever top the Macmillan government for lies, sleaze and backstabbing . . .) Where was I? Ah . . . What I describe as taking place after Ike’s departure would take a matter of days not weeks. I’m not conscious of having changed anything else. It was a very dry summer, Russ Conway did make number one in the pop charts . . . and, from less than ridiculous to the certain sublime, Time Out did become the fastest selling Jazz record in history.
The most useful books I found in the course of research were Eric Rumsey’s The Dockland Gangs (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1960), Rossi and Lambert’s Scotland Yard: Shoot to Kill? (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1959) and Race and Marks’s Teach an Old Pig New Tricks (Werner Laurie, 1947).