What a Carve Up!

Author’s Note

I’d like to thank Monty Berman, co-producer of the film What a Carve Up! for kindly allowing me to quote from the screenplay (written by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton).

Thanks also to Louis Philippe for permission to quote from his song ‘Yuri Gagarin’ (words and music by Louis Philippe, published by Complete Music, copyright © 1989); to Raymond Durgnat, whose marvellous essay on Le Sang des Bêtes (in Franju, published by Studio Vista, 1967) furnished me with a quotation in Dorothy’s chapter and eventually suggested the title of Part Two; and to International Music Publication Ltd for permission to reproduce ‘La Mer’ by Charles Louis Augustine Trenet, copyright © 1939 Brenton (Belgique) Editions Raou, administered by T.B. Harms Co., Warner Chappell Music Ltd, London.

My novel owes a shadowy debt to the works of Frank King, author of The Ghoul (1928), upon which the film What a Carve Up! was distantly based. Paragraph one of my chapter ‘Where There’s a Will’ is copied from the first chapter of The Ghoul (with one word changed), and throughout Part Two there are several smaller instances of what Alasdair Gray has called ‘Implags’ (imbedded plagiarisms) both from The Ghoul and from the equally wonderful Terror at Staups House. Having been unable to trace any information on Mr King, the only repayment I can offer him is to recommend that readers make every effort to seek out these and other novels (What Price Doubloons? for instance, or This Doll is Dangerous) and campaign vigorously for their reissue.

Among the other people who helped me in various ways were Harri Jenkins and Monica Whittle, who gave generously of their time to fill me in on Health Service issues and hospital procedure; Andrew Hodgkiss and Stephanie May, who provided further medical background; Jeremy Gregg, for computer literacy; Michèle O’Leary, for legal expertise; Paul Daintry, for Findlay’s signature and general encouragement; Tim Radford, for Yuriology; plus Russell Levinson, Ralph Pite, Salli Randi, Peter Singer, Paul Hodges, Anne Grebby and Steve Hyam. I’m especially grateful to everyone at Viking Penguin who has worked so hard for the book, and to the inestimable Tony Peake, Jon Riley and Koukla MacLehose, whose efforts on its behalf have been tireless.

As for my printed sources, Mark’s chapter is based largely on information gleaned from Kenneth Timmerman’s The Death Lobby (Fourth Estate, 1992.) — surely the best book ever written about the arms market — which gave me the dead beagles and the apple-shooting, among other things. Details of Iraqi torture practices were obtained from publications by Amnesty International and CARDRI (the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq); SODI is a fictitious organization. Dorothy’s chapter draws on the pioneering work of Ruth Harrison in her book Animal Machines (Vincent Stuart, 1964), supplemented by Mark Gold’s Assault and Battery (Pluto, 1983), Geoffrey Cannon’s The Politics of Food (Century, 1987) and Richard Body’s Our Food, Our Land (Rider, 1991). Of the many books consulted for Thomas’s chapter, by far the most readable and informative were two by Paul Ferris: The City (Gollancz, 1960) and Gentlemen of Fortune (Weidenfeld, 1984). NHS data was furnished by Chris Ham’s The New National Health Service: Organization and Management (Oxford, 1991), and I learned about wartime codenames from Sir John Cecil Masterman’s fascinating book, The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945 (Yale, 1972).

This novel owes its existence, finally, to Janine McKeown, not least because she supported me financially while I was writing it. For this and other reasons, I dedicate it to her with love and gratitude.