Read does not make much of a case for Catholicism, or for religion at all, in [his early novel, The Junkers]. He writes with apparent approval of those ex-Nazis who have repented and are now (the mid-1960s) working for a unified Europe even if the unity can only be achieved by the spread of Communist principles and power….

How far have Read's views changed since he wrote The Junkers? Neither author nor main character in Read's latest novel [A Married Man] seem to have any sympathies with Communism. John Strickland, family man, moderately successful barrister, takes up again at the age of 40 the Socialism in which he had first come to believe when he was an Oxford undergraduate. As a Labour candidate he wins a seat in the February 1974 General Election…. Moreover, at the end of the book Strickland quits even that moderate activism. His wife having...