My interest in politics started at the age of 11. The secondary school I attended in small-town Warwickshire marked the 1974 General Election with a mock election of its own. Pupils stood as representatives of the political parties standing in the national poll. Hustings were held, speeches given, ballot boxes set up. I found myself drawn to the Communist candidate. He was tall and pale, with the hair of a prog rock bassist. He painted utopian word-pictures of the egalitarian

Search online for ‘revenge fiction’ and you’ll find examples of novels in which a desire for revenge drives the plot: The Count of Monte Cristo , Frankenstein , True Grit , Murder on the Orient Express , Gone Girl , Wuthering Heights … This story concerns a different type of revenge fiction, where writing a novel is itself an act of revenge – fiction that portrays a real-life person known to the writer in an unfavourable or compromised way. Think revenge porn, but with bett