The Allegations

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What to expect

On the morning after he has celebrated his 60th birthday party at a celebrity-filled party, Ned Marriott is in bed with his partner, Emma, when there's a knock on the door. Detectives from the London police force's 'Operation Millpond' have come to arrest him over an allegation of sexual assault.
Ned is one of the country's best-known historians - teaching at a leading university, advising governments and making top-rating TV documentaries - but this 'historic' claim from someone the cops insist on calling 'the victim' threatens him with personal and professional ruin and potential imprisonment.
Professor Marriott would normally turn for support to Tom Pimm, his closest friend at the university, but Tom has just been informed that a secret investigation has raised anonymous complaints, which may end Dr Pimm's career.
Swinging between fear, bewilderment and anger, Ned and Tom must try to defend themselves against the allegations, and hope that no others are made. The two men's families and friends are forced to question what they know and think. Can the complainants, detectives, HR teams, journalists and Tweeters who are driving the stories all be seeing smoke that has no fire behind it?
By turns shocking and comic, reportorial and thoughtful, The Allegations startlingly and heart-breakingly captures a contemporary culture in which allegations are easily made and reputations casually destroyed. Asking readers to decide who they believe, it explores a modern nightmare that could happen, in some way, to anyone whose view of personal history may differ from someone else's.

Critics Review

Brilliantly observed and extremely funny . . . Lawson's glitteringly angry and sometimes sad novel reminds us that the biggest casualty, in a victim culture, is often the complexity of the truth
Sunday Times
Meaty and painfully contemporary . . . Lawson pushes back against the tyranny of the aggrieved.
Guardian
Fiction does not get more contemporary than this . . . terrific writing and crackling lines
Daily Mail
Well written, thought-provoking . . . funny
Literary Review
For those who savour indignation (one of my favourite emotions), Mark Lawson's The Allegations is great fun, and it provides at least the illusion of an inside track on the non-fiction backstory
Guardian
A witty, plausible tale of witch-hunt culture and political correctness gone mad
Mail on Sunday
Lawson's skewing of media etiquette is as exact and enjoyable as one would expect . . . When serving the narrative, it is his analyses that distinguish his prose
Times
Bears comparison with Malcolm Bradbury's classic 1975 campus novel The History Man . . . It is clear from Lawson's eloquently written and extraordinarily apposite novel that if careless talk doesn't cost lives, it can certainly cost livelihoods. The Allegations is the work of a man who understands the personal damage this causes. If it's any consolation, at least his stature as a novelist has risen another notch
Guardian
Darkly funny and perceptive comic novel . . . a very good example of a personal disaster being channelled into something bigger . . . Reading it, I thought what a brilliant TV drama The Allegations would make
Times (T2)
Two victims of false accusation feature in Lawson's strongly felt, powerfully written and very timely novel. Indignation at injustice and caustically knowledgeable contempt for those who perpetrate or tolerate it scorch from pages that range from scathing satire to blistering indictment
Sunday Times
A sharp and contemporary addition to Lawson's canon
Evening Standard
An engagement by the prodigiously talented Lawson with unjust allegations destroying a career - a very personal subject for him
Independent
A subtle and thoughtful novel
Herald (Scotland)
A terrifyingly well observed satire
Weekend Sport
Lawson has a great gift for articulating the fury induced by contemporary cultural pieties; Ned and Tom (especially Tom) are vividly and memorably imagined; and the book as a whole is vigorous, intelligent, funny and provocative
Spectator
Two victims of false accusation feature in Lawson’s strongly felt, powerfully written and very timely novel. Indignation at injustice and caustically knowledgeable contempt for those who perpetrate or tolerate it scorch from pages that range from scathing satire to blistering indictment
Times
Kafkaesque account of two academics accused of historic sexual abuse
Herald

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