Customer Reviews

The Affair

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Lewis Eliot is the narrator of the novels in the STRANGERS AND BROTHERS series. C.P. Snow, among other things, was a social historian. Tom Orbell is younger than Lewis. He is a Fellow at the Cambridge College to which Lewis's brother Martin is attached. It is 1953. Lewis is introduced by Tom to Laura Howard. One of the younger Fellows has gotten caught in a case of scientific fraud. The man concerned is Laura's husband Donald. Laura wants Tom to reopen the case. Tom casts Lewis as a sort of elder statesman. He may be able to talk with his friends at the college. Laura decides that Lewis is no good at all.

At the college, visiting his brother, Lewis sees Francis Getliffe. Lewis learns that Howard had been a moderately well-known fellow-traveler. Howard has damaged his case with college personnel by blaming his elderly advisor for the lapse. The man, very distinguished, has died recently.

On Christmas night Martin and Lewis eat at the college to spare their wives the trouble of preparing another meal. Lewis is surprised to learn there that one of the Fellows, Skeffington, believes that Howard's case merits re-opening because a page received in the last batch of notebooks of the deceased scientist may support Howard's explanation of the discrepancy. When Lewis approaches Francis Getliffe to support re-opening the case, he discovers that Francis is inclined, with no particular urging of Lewis, to recommend that the matter be reconsidered. Getliffe's position in the matter is bound to sway others.

In the course of taking testimony it is inevitable that Nightingale, the Bursar, be suspected of secreting a crucial photograph, (the notebook in question passed through his hands first). Fact-finding does not end neatly, but rough justice prevails.

Snow's careful recital of the fictitious controversy and its solution is of great interest. The author's realistic appraisal of people and people's motives is called forth in this excellent work.

Well, he's back on track here, with a well-paced and interesting story set in Cambridge, as was "The Masters". Snow seems so at home there and writes marvelously of the Cambridge Fellows, most of whom appeared in the earlier book. I thought it a good choice to make Howard, the man accused of faking a photograph to prove his science, such a thoroughly unlikeable person, and thereby showing us a purer justice than if he had been someone whose company we enjoyed. The scales of Justice are blind, or should be so. I love reading about the ways and intrigues of Cambridge.

Snow, not the most original of novelists, has recast the Dreyfus affair in a Cambridge college. There's the thoroughly unlikable young man (like Dreyfus, innocent but unpleasant verging on nasty) accused of treason to his calling as a scientist by falsifying data (like Dreyfus, the supposed traitor to France), loved and supported by members of his family (his wife in the novel, Dreyfus's brother and wife in real life), eventually exonerated by an upright man who passionately dislikes the accused man's beliefs (like Picquart, the antisemitic but honest officer who uncovered the truth at great sacrifice to himself), and finally the title of the novel, the name given to the Dreyfus affair by the French press. It was a fun read, and I recommend it.

THE AFFAIR is one of the sequence of novels by C.P.Snow, titled 'Strangers and Brothers'. The events described take place in the early fifties. The story is told by Lewis Eliot, who appears in all these stories and the setting is the college attended by Eliot before the war.

One of the younger 'Fellows' has been caught out in what appears to be a piece of scientific fraud. As a result he has been dismissed. He and his wife insist that he has been unfairly found guilty and Eliot is called upon to assist in righting the wrong.

C.P.Snow writes well, creates memorable characters and is a skilled story teller.This is an excellent novel, as are the others in the sequence!

"The Affair is perhaps the most celebrated of C.P. Snow's books, a runaway best seller and a great hit in its stage adaption.

THIS NOVEL BRINGS LEWIS ELIOT BACK TO HIS OLD CAMBRIDGE COLLEGE.

Donald Howard, a young reserach associate, falsifies data and is deprived of his Fellowship.
Bitter and friendless, he is deserted by all but his wife.
She turns to Eliot for help and he movilizes support for Howard....."
[from the back cover of the case]