“The Prime Minister’s posture looks relaxed, but if you look closely he still has the slight twitching of muscles, emblematic of months without enough sleep, and time zone confusions from manic globe–trotting. Robert is awed by his unflinching certainty. He wants to know if he is really that certain all the way to the core: if you sliced him across would ‘DOUBT’ be written in tiny, tiny red letters right the way through like a stick of Brighton rock? Or is the Prime Minister that dangerous lunatic, the fundamentalist, who really believes his own rhetoric – that he is right, and everyone else is wrong?”



Extract from ‘The Great House’ – included in the showcase