10 Downing St
It will surprise some people to learn that I was, at one point in the services, a NATO press officer. This revelation brings with it a whole set of assumptions regarding viewpoint and conformity. The five months I spent in this post had a huge impact on me and played a strong role in choices I made in the following years.
In September 2001, sitting in a Macedonian bar with a well known BBC journalist, the man was friendly and listened with guarded intelligence. Brought together in a country on the brink of civil war, we each had our own agenda, each believed our role important. Born with a healthy dose of scepticism, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality, intelligence and integrity displayed by the media personalities I met there - a fact that may surprise others given the texture of the coverage that followed in some outlets in the 'war on terror'. Among the more cynical, it may come as a surprise too, to learn that neither I, nor, as far as I am aware, my colleagues, ever lied - among the UK contingent, this was policy. We did manage the truth, however.
With a ring of NATO soldiers surrounding a mountain village, the only way a journalist could watch events unfold as local fighters voluntarily disarmed, was to risk breaking through this defensive ring or accept our offer of a lift in a Chinook. Once there, the theatre of disarmament was staged for their pens and cameras. Thankfully, as far as I believe, this was a benign operation. NATO really was trying to do what it said it was doing; prevent a war. By engineering an environment where each player felt secure and journalists could record events, the smouldering discontent was doused before it destroyed everything. Here, in this case at least, the managed nature of the weapons handover was critical and, it seems, successful.
But sitting in the bar, on that 11th day, watching TV, scores of mobiles clashing in disharmony around us; the BBC, CNN, Sky News, Reuters, PA, the Times, Telegraph and a whole battalion of the world's media were taking orders for redeployment. In the following years, I watched events unfold through the magic box or, on leaving the service, through the radio as I listened to the world from my tent. Like so many people, I was at times puzzled, shocked, appalled and uplifted as good and evil battled. But as politicians finessed their goals and brought old agendas into the equation, moral ambiguity and tactical stupidity confused a situation already fraught with difficulty. Trusting our politicians, we were sold a shift in focus as a necessary evil. Nothing, it seems, is simple. In the dance of media and politics, wars can live or die by perception. The problem is that we all think we're the good guys, all the time.
In the novel, 10 Downing St, you will read none of the above. It is a tale that an intelligent 12-year-old or adult could read and enjoy without seeing or caring a jot for politics. So why did I mention all of that stuff above? Go figure...
Our story begins in Chicago where a young boy witnesses his father suddenly disappear before his eyes. Believing his mother gone too, he is, at first, terrified when he sees his best friend trapped by the same force and about to soar skyward. Ignoring the scattering crowds, he resists the urge to flee and runs instead toward his friend and the pair are transported to the other side of the universe. With the help of two girls, they escape their strange prison but, in the midst of a treacherous act gone wrong, they are catapulted back to Earth where the boy awakes inside the body of the British Prime Minister. For the next 24 hours, he must pretend that he is the real PM or his mother and everyone else on the planet will die.