Charles Snow: The Affair

Charles Percy Snow was born in Leicester, on 15 October 1905. He was educated from age eleven at Alderman Newton's School for boys where he excelled in most subjects, enjoying a reputation for an astounding memory and also developed a lifelong love of cricket. In 1923 he became an external student in science of London University, as the local college he attended in Leicester had no science department. At the same time he read widely and gained practical experience by working as a laboratory assistant at Newton’s to gain the necessary practical experience needed.

Having achieved a first class degree, followed by a Master of Science he won a studentship in 1928 which he used to research at the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. There, he went on to become a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1930 where he also served as a tutor, but his position became increasingly titular as he branched into other areas of activity. In 1934, he began to publish scientific articles in Nature , and then The Spectator before becoming editor of the journal Discovery in 1937. However, he was also writing fiction during this period, with his first novel Death Under Sail published in 1932, and in 1940 'Strangers and Brothers' was published. This was the first of eleven novels in the series and was later renamed 'George Passant' when 'Strangers and Brothers' was used to denote the series itself.

Discovery became a casualty of the war, closing in 1940. However, by this time Snow was already involved with the Royal Society, who had organised a group to specifically use British scientific talent operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour. He served as the Ministry’s technical director from 1940 to 1944. After the war, he became a civil service commissioner responsible for recruiting scientists to work for the government. He also returned to writing, continuing the Strangers and Brothers series of novels. 'The Light and the Dark' was published in 1947, followed by 'Time of Hope' in 1949, and perhaps the most famous and popular of them all, ' The Masters' , in 1951. He planned to finish the cycle within five years, but the final novel 'Last Things' wasn’t published until 1970.

He married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1950 and they had one son, Philip, in 1952. Snow was knighted in 1957 and became a life peer in 1964, taking the title Baron Snow of the City Leicester. He also joined Harold Wilson’s first government as Parliamentary Secretary to the new Minister of Technology. When the department ceased to exist in 1966 he became a vociferous back-bencher in the House of Lords.

After finishing the Strangers and Brothers series, Snow continued writing both fiction and non-fiction. His last work of fiction was ' A Coat of Vanish', published in 1978. His non-fiction included a short life of Trollope published in 1974 and another, published posthumously in 1981, ' The Physicists: a Generation that Changed the World' . He was also inundated with lecturing requests and offers of honorary doctorates. In 1961, he became Rector of St. Andrews University and for ten years also wrote influential weekly reviews for the Financial Times.

In these later years, Snow suffered from poor health although he continued to travel and lecture. He also remained active as a writer and critic until hospitalized on 1 July 1980. He died later that day of a perforated ulcer.

'Mr Snow has established himself, on his own chosen ground, in an eminent and conspicuous position among contemporary English novelists' — New Statesman

This book is the third and last member of the Strangers and Brothers sequence which is set in a Cambridge college. I wrote in a preface to The Masters : “This fictional college stands upon an existing site, and its topography is similar to that of an existing college, though some of the details are different. That is the end, however, of my reference to a real institution.”

I should like to repeat that. So far as I know, there has been no actual deprivation of a Fellow in an Oxford or Cambridge college in circumstances anything like those I have described. Years ago, when I began thinking about the theme of justice, my starting-point was the Dreyfus affair (cf. page 152); hence the title of this book. For the scientific fraud, I have drawn on the picturesque case of Rupp.

WHEN Tom Orbell invited me to dinner at his club, I imagined that we should be alone. As soon as I saw him, however — he was waiting by the porter’s box, watching me climb up the Steps from the street — he said, in a confidential, anxious whisper: “As a matter of fact, I’ve asked someone to meet you. Is that all right?”

He was a large young man, cushioned with fat, but with heavy bones and muscles underneath. He was already going bald, although he was only in his late twenties. The skin of his face was fine-textured and pink, and his smile was affable, open, malicious, eager to please and smooth with soft soap. As he greeted me, his welcome was genuine, his expression warm: his big light-blue eyes stayed watchful and suspicious.

He was telling me about my fellow-guest.

“It’s a young woman, as a matter of fact. Lewis, she is really rather beautiful.”

I had forgotten that this club, like a good many others in London in the ’50s, had taken to letting women in to dine. While he was talking, I had no doubt at all that I was there to serve some useful purpose, though what it was I could not begin to guess.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Tom pressed me, as I was hanging up my coat. “It is all right, isn’t it?”

He led the way, heavy shoulders pushing forward, into the reading-room. The room was so long, so deserted, that it seemed dank, though outside it was a warmish September night and in the grates coal fires were blazing. By one fire, at the far end of the room, a man and woman were sitting in silence reading glossy magazines. By the other stood a young woman in a red sweater and black skirt, with one hand on the mantelpiece. To her Tom Orbell cried out enthusiastically: “Here we are!”

He introduced me to her. Her name was Laura Howard. She was, as he had promised, comely. She had a shield-shaped face and clear grey eyes, and she moved with energy and grace. Tom got us sitting in armchairs on opposite sides of the fire, ordered drinks, dumped himself on the sofa between us. “Here we are ,” he said, as though determined to have a cosy drinking evening.

He proceeded to talk, flattering us both, using his wits and high spirits to get the party going.

I glanced across at Laura. One thing was clear, I thought. She had been as astonished as I was to find she was not dining alone with Tom Orbell: quite as astonished, and much more put out.

“When are you going to come and see us again?” Tom was addressing himself to me, tucking in to a large whisky. “We really do miss you, you know.”

By “us”, he meant the Cambridge college of which I had been a Fellow before the war. I still had many friends there, including my brother Martin, who was himself a Fellow, and went to see them two or three times a year. It was on one of those visits that I had first met Tom, just after he had taken his degree in history. He had made a reputation as a bright young man, and I had heard my old friends saying that they would have to elect him. That had duly happened — so far as I remembered, in 1949, four years before this dinner in his club.