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‘The Division Bell Mystery’ Made Me Rethink Working with Politicians
A detective story from the 1930s tells us more about modern politics than the news
I heard about The Division Bell Mystery fairly soon after arriving at the House of Lords to join the ranks of those who “have to be in the House but not of it”. Although it’s almost 90 years old, the book is widely remembered in that small orbit, and I absorbed the fact of its existence as a piece of trivia to pass on, in due course, to newer, greener officials.
But it was only as the clock was counting down to my own departure from Parliament, nearly a decade later, that I picked up Ellen Wilkinson MP’s only novel.
The novel’s place in 1930s crime fiction
Republished in 2018 as part of the British Library’s Crime Classics series, The Division Bell Mystery was published during Wilkinson’s time out of Parliament (1931–34). It reflects some of her longing for both the place and the intrigues of politics while she was on the outside, which I identified with as my own time walking the Parliamentary estate freely ended.
Wilkinson’s novel reflects the hubbub of an inattentive organisation that needs piercing sounds to…
