Neal Ascherson (2017) The Death of the Fronsac.

Historians that buy into the great-man theory of history learn how to write fiction. Look no further than the moron’s moron and 45^th American President. That kind of stuff writes itself. Neal Ascherson isn’t that kind of historian or that kind of journalist. Wars are won by women and men doing their best while knowing that something bigger than them is happening.

The story begins in Greenock on the banks of the Clyde. Gateway to the Atlantic, during the phony war, where Allied ships gathered in its ports. The hero is Maurycy Szcuki. He’s a Polish officer, but his country no longer exists. Stalin and Hitler have divided it. Taken it as spoils of war in an uneasy alliance, claiming that Poland was a fiction. The parallels with Ukraine are obvious. Local sympathy hardening into suspicion and antagonism, trumpeted from pulpits, wondering when Poles are going to go home, after all they were Catholics—‘that means they can do anything they want’—even though they have no homeland.

Szchuki works as an attaché for the French navy. As well as his native Polish, he speaks French, English and later German. His pre-war uniform, which includes riding boots, is treated with mockery and suspicion by the locals. He’s billeted with another young Scottish naval officer, his wife and child, Jackie and her granny.

Much of the narrative is told from Szcuki’s point of view. But begins with Jackie’s.

‘One day Jackie came home early from school and blew the world up.’

Szcuki explains, ‘That story should belong to her.’ But it doesn’t it belongs to him, Major Mike. He unravels what happened that day when the world blew up and helps identify who was responsible. In many ways it’s the story of Scotland. Read on.