In My Father keeps the PM waiting I have combined fact and fiction with my own recollections (which, of course, are neither, exactly). Nothing very unusual in that; but what may, perhaps, be worth explaining is that I have given myself complete freedom to move between the true, the made-up and the remembered, as and when I choose.

So I have written about things that definitely happened; things that I think must have happened; things that could conceivably have happened; things that I remember happening but may not have happened as I remember; things that almost certainty didn’t happen, unless I have made a lucky guess; and things that definitely didn’t happen.

Even if you asked me to, I wouldn’t now be able to provide you with a complete breakdown of where fact ends and fiction begins in My Father keeps the PM waiting; I have forgotten which parts, exactly, I made up.

But I can say that almost all the events relating to the 1970 general election campaign did take place, though I have allowed myself to imagine the details of how they took place. For example, the PM did make a speech at a meeting attended by celebrity Labour supporters at Hammersmith Town Hall on the evening of Monday 15 June, though there is no documentary evidence to suggest that Basil Brush was among them. The weather was scorchingly hot throughout the campaign, and the first drops of rain for weeks did fall as the PM was leaving No 10 for what proved to be the last time. And it is, freakishly, absolutely true that Guildford – my father’s home constituency – was the first to declare, at around 11.17 pm, providing the earliest indication of the disaster to follow for him, and for Labour.

Conversely, most of what I have written about the specifics of My Father’s involvement in the campaign is made up. He was an unpaid press adviser to the PM, and did travel with him. And he was widely seen to be responsible for innovations such as the PM’s presidential walkabouts. But I don’t know if he really attended a strategy session at No 10 on the Monday morning before the election, or had a night-cap with the PM that evening, or wrote the party political broadcasts, or hated Joe Haines, or bought the wine for the end-of-campaign press party, or watched the results in the PM’s suite at the Adelphi hotel. The only claim for truthfulness that I can make is to say that, given his role in the campaign, and the facts I do have about how events unfolded, everything that my fictional character does and says might, fairly plausibly, have been done and said by my father.

As far as My Father’s non-political life is concerned, the same applies. Most of the scenes and situations in which I have shown him either did occur, or probably must have done; but almost all the circumstantial detail is made up. So, for example, my father did work with 60s supermodel Jean Shrimpton, but there is no reason to believe she stabbed him with a fork; he did marry my mother on 24 June 1950, and I know they made “cream” by boiling a can of condensed milk, but I have no idea if my father was already certain he was making a terrible mistake; and he did bump into his father in post-war London, and fail to recognise him, but I have no information about what time of year it was, how my grandfather was dressed, or where this encounter took place. I have no evidence that my father ever, for a single moment, contemplated suicide.

I would also like to make it clear that the Other Woman is a fictional character, and there is no reason to believe she had a real-life counterpart.

Even when I am writing from memory about parts of my father’s life I was directly involved in, I have given myself permission to make up what I can’t remember, or to improve upon what I can. Of our mid-90s trip to Jerusalem, for example, all I can recall with certainty is the appalling food-poisoning I suffered and the terror of driving on lawless foreign highways with my drunken father incapable of navigating, or providing support of any kind. But I’m fairly sure that at least 70% of what I wrote in the piece does correspond, quite closely, to what actually occurred. Well, maybe 65%.

Is this approach to telling my father’s story fair to him? Obviously not. But providing a fair assessment of my father’s life and achievements was never my intention in undertaking this project. Without going into unnecessary detail about what my motives actually were (something about wanting to get to know my father better than I did when he was alive), I can say categorically that there is no attempt to be objective here, or to achieve BBC-like balance. This is my side of my father’s story.

But what about fairness to you? How can I justify presenting a potential reader with an account of a man’s life, but no means of knowing which parts are true, which loosely based on the facts, and which completely made up?

Of course, only you can answer that. I hope that, as you read, you will find yourself sufficiently engaged, and entertained, to nullify any concerns you may have about the purpose, or even the ethics, of the exercise. But if you can’t see the point of a book that shows no respect whatever for the boundaries between fact and faction, I can only hold up my hands and admit that’s exactly what I have written.

Incidentally, if you do have any questions arising from what you read here – about which parts are true, or anything else – please do contact me. I may not be able to provide reliable answers, but I would be happy to try.

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