by Lewis Cameron

There are two short and snappy Christmas reads which have both appeared with fortuitous timing: one about a deranged leader with a Brexit type problem and the other about the role of the law in politics.

The first is The Cockroach by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape 2019 ) about a Prime Minister who awakes one morning to find himself transformed into this creature after embracing and persuading his similarly transformed cabinet to support and impose not Brexit, but the new theory of Revivalism which has split the nation. The flow of money is reversed, workers pay their employers and in return are paid for shopping. It is a tale both amusing and horrifying and every character is easily identified from the leader down, although there is a prior warning that ‘Any resemblance to actual cockroaches living or dead is entirely coincidental’!