TV series, based on Elizabeth Day’s bestselling novel, set in world of ‘glittering hedonism’

“The Party”, on ITV1, is “a tale of class division, toxic privilege and cold betrayal”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. Based on Elizabeth Day’s 2017 novel, this “juicy psychological thriller” is about the friendship between Benjamin Fitzmaurice (Tom Cullen), a rising star of the Conservative Party, and working-class outsider Martin Gilmour (Luke Evans).

And it unfolds across three timelines: school and university days, where a tragedy binds the two together; Ben’s birthday bash in the present day; and the aftermath, in which Martin is in a police interview room, bloodied and shaken. “Something terrible happened at the party,” he says, and, over five episodes, we find out exactly what.

The notion of a working-class boy thrust into a world of “glittering hedonism” isn’t exactly fresh, said Ben Dowell in The Times. Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Line of Beauty” covered this ground, as did “Saltburn” more recently. But this drama “sings its own plangent song”, and the series features some “beautiful” performances, too. The young Martin’s awkward Christmas viewing of “Coronation Street” with his mum is “particularly heartbreaking”.

It’s a shame that the main themes – class, sexuality and repression – are not more forensically explored, said Phil Harrison in The Independent. We never really discover why these two men behave the way they do. A fine supporting cast, meanwhile, feels underused. Still, the series is very entertaining. “It’s not a party you’d want to attend, but it’s one you’ll happily, voyeuristically observe with a shudder.”

by Michael Lewis

“After a career spent getting readers excited about credit-default swaps (‘The Big Short’) and sabermetrics (‘Moneyball’)”, the American journalist Michael Lewis “decided to try to help people understand the importance of civil servants”, said Sam Freedman in The Guardian.

He did this first in “The Fifth Risk”, his 2018 book about the damage caused by the first Trump administration’s “almost complete lack of interest” in the workings of government. Now, he has written a “loose sequel” dealing with Donald Trump’s return to office and, “this time around, the problem is not indifference but malicious intent to destroy”.

“Blockers” is an account of the vandalistic work of Elon Musk’s Doge and “other agents of chaos”, notably Republican operative Russell Vought, who essentially became Trump’s cost-cutter-in-chief when Musk fell out with the president. At the same time, it shines a light on the “blockers” – Musk’s derisive term for the “dedicated officials” who did their best to hinder his reforms.

The book is a “rollercoaster”, said Laura Miller on Slate. It alternates between “heartening stories of stellar federal civil servants” and “blood-pressure-spiking accounts” of the “Elon-worshipping idiot boys” sent to slash their budgets or hound them from their jobs. In one chapter, we see an IRS official “locking herself in a darkened conference room” to avoid a “capricious Doge goon who wanted her to give him confidential information on seven million taxpayers”.

Another is focused on Francis Collins, who was sacked from his senior role at the National Institutes of Health. Among a host of distinguished achievements, Collins was “instrumental in identifying the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis”. Yet he was forced to leave at short notice, carrying his possessions in “a small cardboard box”. Lewis suggests that, ironically, the person ultimately responsible for his dismissal was Vought, whose own daughter has cystic fibrosis.

Such stories aren’t just personal tragedies, said Tim Adams in The Observer; they are calamitous for America. The cuts carried out by Musk and others led to “vast institutional knowledge” being removed at a stroke, “to be replaced by venal incompetence”.

The aim was to “dispose of and humiliate” an entire class of people who cared about the good that government could do, and about following legal due process. Nor did Doge’s reforms even succeed on their own terms: despite Musk’s boast that he would cut $2 trillion from the government’s $7 trillion budget, this year’s federal spend is estimated to be $7.4 trillion. Lewis has produced an “essential record” of a dismal episode in American history.

Politician and novelist who was jailed for perjury

“Jeffrey Archer, who has died aged 86, was irrepressible,” said Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian – “though not necessarily in a good way.” At various points, he was accused of lying about his background, embellishing his CV, committing plagiarism and fraud and – perhaps worst of all – of being “unpleasant to underlings”. And while some of the allegations were never proved, he was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice and sentenced to four years in jail. 

Yet Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare – senior Tory politician, former athlete, bestselling novelist and bon viveur – simply sailed on. Editors continued to adulate him; his books kept selling in their millions; and sports stars, writers and politicians still flocked to the “shepherd’s pie and Krug” parties he hosted in his “sumptuous”, art-filled apartment overlooking the Thames. Archer, it turned out, was what the Titanic was supposed to be: “unsinkable”. 

Growing up in Weston-super-Mare, Archer was doted on by his mother, who worked as a journalist on the local paper and sent him to Wellington School on a scholarship. As an adult, he’d imply that he had been to the grander Wellington College. Bullied for being puny, he threw himself into athletics and bodybuilding, and distinguished himself as a sprinter. He stayed at the school until 18, yet left with just three O levels. 

On the basis of a false report that he had three A levels and had studied anatomy at a university in the US, he was then accepted to Oxford. But though he presented himself as an undergraduate at Brasenose, he was actually doing a one-year diploma in education at a teacher training college linked to it.

As a student in Oxford, he arranged fundraising drives for Oxfam, including via the coup of persuading The Beatles to appear at Brasenose. Yet as Michael Crick revealed in his biography, Oxfam was not only troubled by the way he exaggerated the sums he had raised; it also suspected that he was skimming off funds. 

In Oxford, Archer met Mary Weeden, a chemistry student who became his wife in 1966. Settling in London, he found work as a fundraiser for the United Nations Association. Its chair, the ex-Tory MP Humphry Berkeley, became convinced that he was embezzling funds. But the UNA hushed it up, and Archer was accepted for the safe Tory seat in Louth, Lincolnshire, which he won at a by-election in 1969. 

In his writing, Archer was no stylist, but he could tell a “rollicking story”, said The Times. In 1976, his debut novel, “Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less”, became a bestseller. His novels would go on to sell more than 300 million copies. He also returned to politics: Margaret Thatcher made him deputy Tory chairman in 1985, describing him as “the extrovert’s extrovert”. 

Then, in 1986, the Daily Star sensationally accused Archer of having been a client of a sex worker named Monica Coghlan. He sued for libel and, in court, denied ever even meeting Coghlan (though he did admit to asking an intermediary to pay her £2,000 in cash to leave the country). She was vilified as a liar and an extortionist. In summing up, the judge famously highlighted Mary Archer’s testimony: “Remember Mary Archer in the witness box,” he told the jury. “Has she elegance? Has she fragrance?” With such a wife, how could Archer “possibly be in need of cold, unloving rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel?” Having presented what seemed to be a solid alibi, Archer won and was awarded £500,000 in damages. 

Two years later, Archer was accused of insider dealing over shares he’d bought in Anglia TV just before a takeover bid. His wife sat on the firm’s board. He was cleared of that, but then fell out with a friend who had helped concoct his alibi in the libel case, and was charged with perjury.
 
Following his release from jail, Archer published his prison diaries, carried on with his charity work and wrote more novels. Mary, who survives him with their sons, remained by his side to the end. Explaining her loyalty, she once said: “I think I would find it a little monochrome, a little grey, to have a sort of a more conventional life with a more conventional husband.”