Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. She has a British connection through her estranged father Saul, an English thriller writer. Saul, whose parents were of Anglo-German origin, has spent much of his life plotting to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. As the time approaches for him to make his move to expose duplicity, murder and lies at the heart of the British State, he seeks Rachael’s help. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and the United States become engaged in the drama, with one side determined to get the secrets out and the other determined to keep them hidden.
Set equally in the United States and Britain, the narrative grips from the first page, transporting the reader to the heart of government both in Washington and London and on into the darkest corners of the secret states on each side of the Atlantic. Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth both from intrigues of the Nazi era, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself.

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The news of the church massacre has stunned America and shocked the world. The fact that it has happened at all flies in the face of everything America stands for and believes itself to be. An exasperated and deflated President seemed powerless to do any more than ring his hands. And no wonder. This is apparently the fourteenth time he has had to comfort America in the aftermath of a  massacre of innocents at the hands of a nutcase with a gun.

America is the only developed country in the world in which the citizens are lawfully armed against their neighbours and have the legal means to purchase weapons to launch such attacks. The perpetrator of this attack was given the gun which he used, as a twenty first birthday present by his father. That gift would have been a crime in the UK. Yet every attempt to control guns is thwarted by the country’s most powerful lobby which sees the means to kill at hand in the home or pocket a constitutional right which is synonymous with freedom.

But it is now getting worse. Racism is back. This latest tragedy is the murder of black people, among them men and women of distinguished public service and unimpeachable integrity, by a white man full of colour prejudice and hate who killed not because of who his victims were but because of the colour of their skins. Few crimes can be worse nor their motivation more perverted. It comes after several incidents of police shooting unarmed black people for little if any reason, which has inflamed tensions and caused riots.

America is now presenting an ugly aspect of itself which disgusts the world and diminishes its authority. The great irony is that America is the country which sets the bar of excellence highest, champions freedom above all others and seeks to do the most good. Sadly the weaknesses of its foundations, built upon  slavery determined by race when all men were said to be equal, and resolved by conflict in one of the bloodiest civil wars in history, rather than by dialogue in a country claiming to be the most complete democracy in the world, have become fissures which have not and cannot heal unless there is a national awakening that things cannot go on as they are. Only when all its people are, are said to be and are treated as truly equal and of equal value will America be truly free. And only when the citizens are disarmed by law and the constitution amended to prohibit the unauthorised ownership of guns will Americans be safe.