Pax: 1934-1941

A modern historical novel set mainly in the UK from 1934 to 1941. A young American scholar arrives in Cambridge University to study art history in 1934, when distinguished scholars such as Berenson , Fritz Saxl, Venturi, Gombrich, and others were alive. In a turbulent, highly sexed and academically intense environment, he is a sharp and charismatic witness. The cast of characters also mirrors, in a mixed kaleidoscopic form, the notorious group of communist Cambridge friends who were active in the field of politics as well as the arts. Through the influence of his godfather, a very wealthy American with dual British and USA nationality living in London, the narrator also gains an entree into the leading circles of government. Just as he experiences the debate between Fascism and Communism as argued by the Cambridge acolytes such as Burgess, Hobsbawm, Blunt, so also he is a confidential observer of the dire political conflict between the appeasers led by Chamberlain, and his opponents, led by Churchill and Cecil.Written with the authority, and something of the style, of non-fiction, this fictionalised story of a crucial period in modern history has a raw and only too credible denoument. It is an era when the skies darken and the ultimate storm must smash through these institutions regardless of their antique strength. The ground beneath the reader's feet becomes suddenly and hideously unreliable.

About the Author :
Michael Holzman has written the biographies of James Angleton (The CIA and the Craft of Counterintelligence. publ. University of Massachusetts Press) Guy Burgess (Revolutionary in an Old School Tie) and Donald and Melinda Maclean (Idealism and Espionage. publ Chelmsford Press 2014) He is also the author of Lukacs's Road to God; Writing As Social Action (with Marilyn Cooper); The Chains of Black America: The Hammer of the Police, The Anvil of the School. He has also written reports, articles, and academic papers on the subject of education and the condition of American descendants of enslaved Africans. This is his first work of fiction. He lives with his wife in New York's Hudson River Valley.

Review :
Praise for Michael Holzman.DONALD AND MELINDA MACLEAN:IDEALISM AND ESPIONAGE. by Michael Holzman (Chelmsford Press 1914) "Historian Michael Holzman has revisited (this) subject based on extensive research of new material that has become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union..Holzman quotes some of his (Maclean's) writings on the Soviet economy that, he suggests, presaged those of Gorbachev... this book is the best treatment of the Maclean case to date." Hayden Peake in Studies in Intelligence. (the house publication of the CIA) JAMES ANGLETON, THE CIA, AND THE CRAFT OF COUNTER INTELLIGENCE; "Holzman"s brisk, uncluttered book offers valuable access to previously untapped material on Angleton, who became the first head of the Counter-intelligence Staff of the CIA. In particular, it makes incisive use of his years as a student of English at Yale and the influence on him of the New Critics and modernist poets of his day."Terence Hawkes. Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Cardiff.