Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy and right hand man, flew to Scotland on a mysterious peace mission in 1941, which has never been convincingly explained, to meet unidentified politicians who wanted to end the war. The truth has been covered up for generations because to reveal it would somehow undermine the honour and constitutional fabric of the United Kingdom. Who was plotting against Churchill? What were the peace terms on offer? What happened to Hess? Was he killed in the War? Was the prisoner in Spandau a double?
There are many questions to which in the modern day one man, Saul Benedict has all the answers, because his parents were players in the drama involving Churchill, Hitler, leading politicians and an important Royal. Saul is an author and declares his intention to write a book to reveal all, but he is shot dead, apparently accidentally by a poacher. But was it an accident? Rick Coleman an investigative journalist determines to find out and in doing so to uncover the mystery.
Taking place in the modern day but with flashback chapters which gradually unfold the hidden secrets, the novel is a fast moving and compelling read based on the family knowledge of the author whose parents had connections to both Hess and Hitler and to British Intelligence.  

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The world nine years ago looked rather different. The threats facing it were different. Russia was still recovering from the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union and grappling with a power structure, which included former communist officials who had managed to acquire control of former state monopolies making them super rich oligarchs, the very powerful Russian Mafia and the FSB. The government came fourth in line. Among them all were rivalries, enmities and power struggles.

An offshoot of this maelstrom was a former KGB officer who fled to England, became a British citizen, joined MI6, worked also for the Spanish security service and was a vociferous critic of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. A more dangerous combination of associations and activities is hard to imagine, heroic though the causes may have been. Somebody in Russia had finally had enough and orders were given for a sophisticated and untraceable murder using a toxic infusion of polonium in the victim’s tea in a up market London hotel.

Not for the first time the surprisingly secretive British state possessed detection skills based on science at cutting edge levels which not only identified the poison but traced its origins back to Moscow through a trail leading all over Europe, leaving no doubt whatsoever who the perpetrators were. This was all known years ago. It is indeed and affront to murder people in another country and we do not have to rehearse the very real anger that such an act invokes. Nor do we have to mince our words in telling the Russians that this is not acceptable. Unfortunately to do it nine years on creates a theatrical backdrop which diminishes the impact. It allows the guilty to claim we made it up. We really do have to reduce the extraordinary longevity of our public inquiries, which end up arguing about history from which most have moved on. Chilcot falls into this category.

That the truth is at last officially in the open will come as a late but well deserved comfort to the victim’s wife and son, who are notable for their dignity and level headedness at the epicentre of a family nightmare. There will be much expostulating, sanctioning and banning to reinforce our sense of national outrage. But at the end of the  day we have to accept that Russia is Russia, over centuries fundamentally it changes little and whatever its faults and weaknesses, it has qualities and strengths upon which we depend to help sort out a good deal of trouble in the world as it is today.