Might just have come up from a weekend at Cliveden. The Untouchable is an autopsy on a certain kind of Englishness, performed notably by an Irishman unstinting in his use of the scalpel. Banville, like Maskell, sets out to distinguish between form and content in English life. Given so much class dressing, much remains hidden and in need of explanation. Maskell, in his privileged position as curator of the monarch's pictures, tries to tell his Moscow masters that he has not penetrated the very seat of power, as they believe, but is merely witness to the after-dinner games of a sort of surrogate parent to the nation, and not one to be taken seriously.
More vital penetration goes on elsewhere, of and by the lower orders.
The Untouchable is also about English homosexuality of a particular period - and, suggests Banville, fun was to be had. Most accounts of English betrayal identify the double life and leave it at that. In the world that lies behind appearances, Querell is exposed as that worst thing of all, a fraud. Querell is clearly Graham Greene, who once crossed Banville over the awarding of a literary prize, and much mischief is had at the dead man's expense. Unlike Blunt, Maskell, though homosexual too, is married and has children, a marriage clearly taken from Greene's own.