A Very English Agent

Rathbone's `A Very English Agent' opens with grim humour upon our hero, Charlie Boylan, as he enages in his latest adventure whilst the opening salvos of the Battle of Waterloo (June 1815) rage around him. A sense of self-irony prevails throughout the opening three chapters which serves to firmly establish Charlie's character and good fortune though we end on a slightly patronising note as the author feels it necessary to explain to us that we were, in fact talking about Waterloo. Still....Part II moves to `present Day' (1852) where we find our protagonist locked up for entering Whitehall with a loaded pistol whilst attempting to claim pecuniary redress. He claims to be able to implicate much of the government and royalty in matters of nefarious intent during the Parliamentary reforms of the past forty years and proceeds to do so by writing down everything for the reader and investigator to mull over. Given over to Charlie Boylan/Bosham's narration and Cargill's (the civil servant assigned the case of finding out what he knows) `interrogation' of him, the main bulk of Part II is devoted to Charlie's enlisting by Whitehall as a secret agent. In a delightful parody of Fleming, in probably the finest paragraph in the entire novel and aptly ending Part II, Rathbone assigns 003 to Boylan and has him wondering who the other two people before him were given a licence to kill, (possibly Oliver - modelled on the historical William Oliver, referred to as the agent provocateur in Jeremiah Brandreth's death) as he embarks on his new career with his faithful Spinks and Pottle.Part III deals with Charlie's various missions, revealing that he was responsible for many seditious leaders' hangings due to murders they did not commit during riots he provoked. Above it all, de Bourgeois and Stafford (later Peel takes over) sit as Charlie's M and Q, with the three political magnates, the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, Wellington and the Home Secretary, Sidmouth (the latter is replaced by Lord Castlereagh after Sidmouth's retirement in 1821), having ridiculously sublime conversations to ensure their continued political pre-eminence through the Six Acts (1819).We discover our anti-hero was a prime instigator of the Peterloo massacre (1819), gets his cover blown in Nottingham after previously having secured the convictions of the Pentrich Plotters and ensured Cashman's death and then concludes with Thistlewood's hanging after the attempted assassination of the entire cabinet (The Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820) and subsequent exit from England having been spotted once too often.Part IV throws up Charlie's freedom from Pentonville (on a technicality) and turning up at Cargill's house (where his wife Emily is undergoing her own private liberation) settles down with port and cigars to narrate his Mediterranean escapade in the assassination of Percy Bysshe Shelley (d.1822). He manages to insinuate himself into the group and what follows is an attempt to both catalogue and