Robert Westall’s Fathom Five: The Scholarship Boy and Socialism

Abstract

This chapter discusses Robert Westall’s Fathom Five (1979) in relationship to the tensions between scholarship boy writing, socialism and left-wing literary criticism. This critically neglected novel was condemned not only by conservative critics but also by a reviewer for a left-wing magazine. This reaction arose from the fact that Westall depicted inconvenient realities for some socialists, such as conflicts within the working class at a variety of levels. This novel furthermore articulated the limitations of culturally middle-class socialism in the mid-twentieth century. However, Westall’s illustrative depiction of power of the dominant culture that deprives the scholarship boy of political power, and his emphasis on the political importance of class cultures, are significant when considering the meaning of class struggle for scholarship boy writers of this generation.