topics: |  fiction | uk

The "affair of the title refers to a small scientific cheat or chicanery
(the use and subsequent disappearance of a photograph illustrating a piece of
research) and it is the means here of examining many areas of ethical and
intellectual consideration as well as personal motivation over and above the
morally ambiguous situation which has provoked it. Howard, a younger man, of
doubtful character, politics and aptitude, formerly on a research fellowship
at a select Cambridge college, had been dismissed- for the use of a
photograph which was admittedly a fraud but which he claims to have secured
from the notebook of an esteemed, now deceased, professor. While there are
those- in the interests of the college- who are reluctant to reopen the case
and hold a second hearing, there are others who override the almost
autocratic inviolability of the board and Lewis Eliot handles the defense in
the proceedings to follow, which involve all kinds of innuendos,
speculations, prejudices as well as personal gratifications. It is a
scrupulous, equable, stimulating, passionless examination of human conduct-
and C.P. Snow's considered almost flat prose is often deceptive so subtle are
many of the intentions and revelations which ensue. - Kirkus