Palace of Westminster

The Palace of Westminster is both a landmark against which the threat of war becomes visible and the seat of the parliamentary response to it. In the novel, its surroundings frame Hugh Legat’s first encounter with the crisis as a public spectacle; within the complex, Neville Chamberlain prepares to bring the unfolding emergency before the House of Commons.

A landmark in the unfolding crisis

At the top of the steps from Carlton House Terrace to St James’s Park, Legat encounters a silent crowd of twenty watching what appears to be a small airship rise behind the Houses of Parliament. It passes the spire of Big Ben, while half a dozen more silver shapes climb in the distance south of the Thames. The scene makes the crisis visible across the city: the seat of government stands behind an unfamiliar spectacle in the sky.

A bystander’s remark about the balloon having gone up returns Legat to a childhood memory of his father leaving for France during the First World War. The familiar landmark thus becomes the setting for a private association between a present emergency and the last time Legat saw his father. Public danger and personal memory converge in a brief pause before the story returns to the work of government.

The route to Parliament

When Chamberlain travels to address MPs, the approach to the Palace is slowed by a crowd stretching eight or ten deep along the pavements and gathered around the Cenotaph. Fresh flowers lie at the memorial; two Chelsea Pensioners in scarlet uniforms carry a wreath of poppies and turn to watch the Prime Minister’s car pass. Mounted police clear the way through Whitehall and Parliament Square, but the car is repeatedly forced to a walking pace or a halt.

Legat uses the journey to revise the speech in the moving car. Chamberlain adds a tribute to Benito Mussolini for requesting a twenty-four-hour postponement of German mobilisation, arguing that Mussolini’s willingness to work for peace should be welcomed. The interruption of the journey and the last-minute change to the address bring the diplomatic crisis directly into the ceremonial approach to Parliament.

The parliamentary setting

Inside the Palace, a green-carpeted, wood-panelled corridor lies immediately beside the Commons Chamber. Six hundred MPs are assembled, waiting for the session to begin; their conversation reaches the adjoining rooms as a continuous low rumble. Chamberlain passes the waiting secretaries, hands his hat and umbrella to Miss Watson, removes his overcoat, and meets his Parliamentary Private Secretary, Alec Douglas-Hume, and the Chief Whip, Captain Margesson.

The urgency of this sitting is sharpened by the break that preceded it. Parliament had been in recess for two months; when it rose for the summer, there had been no Czech crisis, imminent war, gas masks, or slit trenches. Chamberlain’s address is therefore not simply a speech to a waiting chamber but an effort to bring elected representatives up to date on events that have transformed the country’s circumstances.

Public record and withheld information

The telegrams and minutes Legat compiled for the address are printed as a White Paper for release to peers and MPs while Chamberlain speaks. Yet the published record is selective. The Foreign Office and Cabinet Office remove sensitive documents, including the agreement between Chamberlain and the French Prime Minister, Édouard Daladier, that even a victorious war would leave Czechoslovakia, in its existing form, no longer in existence. The parliamentary setting consequently carries both disclosure and concealment: representatives are to be informed of the crisis, but not every fact shaping the government’s choices is made public.