Corridors of Power

Summary: An ambitious member of Parliament challenges Britain’s nuclear policy in the aftermath of the Suez crisis.

The phrase “corridors of power” has come into common political parlance. And it is C.P. Snow we have to thank for this. However, its use in the title of this novel was not its first. Rather, it occurs in an earlier novel Homecomings published in 1956. Both this and the earlier novel are part of Snow’s Strangers and Brothers series, written between 1940 and 1970. The novels narrate the education and career of civil servant, Lewis Eliot. This mirrors C. P. Snows own career, first as a physical chemist, turned civil servant, and later as a director of several science and technology organizations.

Eliot is serving an show more elderly cabinet minister at the opening of the novel, who is displaced, ostensibly due to ill health, by rising star Roger Quaife. Eliot continues to serve under him and is drawn into his ambitious, yet coldly realistic policy goals for the U.K. During this time, the country has come through the Suez Crisis, an episode revealing their declining power. Rather than to attempt to keep up pretenses, Quaife wants the U.K. to end its participation in the nuclear arms race, leaving it to the two rival superpowers. Much of the novel develops the efforts to politically sell this policy. Eliot’s role is to chair a committee of scientists to make recommendations about the policy. Quaife wants their endorsement, and all but a dissenting scientist get the message.

Eliot has another role to play as well. Quaife has the perfect political marriage, with a glamorous and influential wife (who is a good friend of Eliot’s wife). We follow them in the rounds of parties with rich and influential friends. But Quaife also is involved in an affair on the side. Eliot becomes involved when Quaife’s lover begins receiving letters threatening to expose the affair if Quaife doesn’t end it.

The novel builds toward twin crises as Quaife faces a political vote of confidence amid growing dissent over his proposed policy and his wife’s ultimatum to Quaife to end the affair. He has dazzled with his consummate political skills. But will that be enough to carry him through these crises?

The novel serves as a commentary on the U.K.’s relative waning power, yet is far ahead of the times. As of 2025, the U.K. is still a nuclear power and significant NATO partner. Whether it was Snow’s intent, it also seemed a commentary on the vacuity of political power. Indeed, I wondered whether Quaife’s affair was the one thing of meaning, of real humanity in a life taken up with ambition and power.

I think I only knew of Snow through his book The Two Cultures describing the breakdown of communication between the sciences and humanities. I came across this work as a deal in e-book format, not realizing it was part of a series. Even though it was the ninth in the series, it reads well as a standalone. I just might try a few more! show less

I was disappointed with this. As a civil servant myself, I expected to be interested in this novel about Parliamentary politics and the relationship between Ministers and civil servants. It started quite strongly, but the writing was rather overblown and too often just plain dull. At a distance of 50 years, it was almost impossible to identify with any of the principle characters, almost none of which came across at all sympathetically. Every politician and civil servant featured or even mentioned here is male, a more accurate reflection then than now of reality, but not quite as uniformly so even then. The central issue here of nuclear disarmament and the threat of a nuclear war is a stark reminder of the Cold War era in which the show more novel is set (1955-57) and was written (1964) and there are some interesting debates buried here among the turgid prose. But it wasn't enough to stop me feeling a great sense of relief when I finished it. 2.5/5 show less

C.P. Snow is one of those very popular writers of the 50s and 60s who seems to have fallen off the radar completely in more recent times. Never having read anything by him, I thought I'd try at least one to get a feel for his style. Obviously, it's a bit unfair to judge him by the 9th book from an 11-book roman-fleuve, but this was the one that happened to come to hand.

Clearly, this tale of the rise and fall of an ambitious politician at the time of Suez is a very perceptive, realistic analysis of the way that the political process — or indeed the decision-making process in any large bureaucracy — works. Snow gives us an insider's view of the murky world of committee rooms, private offices, memoranda, minutes, and (of course) the show more corridors in which the really important decisions are taken. There's a particular period interest in the way this book describes (with ten years' hindsight) a moment at which the modern style of media-dominated politics was finally displacing the old-fashioned British politics of aristocratic hostesses and country house-parties. Less interesting for the modern reader is the debate about Britain's "independent nuclear deterrent" which is at the heart of the plot: anyone who was around in the 60s, 70s or 80s has heard far more interesting and sophisticated arguments on both sides than are presented here. Given that he was writing with hindsight, Snow could probably have done a better job of putting this question into the context of Britain's humiliation over Suez.

The main problem with this book, though, is that Snow as he presents himself here is a dreadfully dull, humourless writer. There isn't a hint of irony or self-deprecation, as there would be in Anthony Powell: everything is presented to us in deadly earnest and is meant to be taken seriously. We are obviously supposed to be reading the book for instruction, not entertainment. show less

1896 Corridors of Power, by C. P. Snow (read 27 Dec 1984) This ninth novel in the series was, I regret to say, often a bore. It tells of Roger Quaife, who was a Minister in the Government (1955-58--all fictional, of course) who takes a position that Britain must not seek nuclear power. He is carrying on an affair with another man's wife, and loses in effect a vote in Parliament, and resigns. I really deplore the moral tone of Snow, and I regret the immoral lives of his protagonists. This book was a bore most of the time, and I will be glad when I am through with the series.

Inside politics, this story shows us how really dirty it can get when folks fight for power. Also reminds us that it's not always black/white and asks us what *we* would do in the same situation.

Still one of the best insights into officials, scientists and politicians.