Jolly modern reading: "Expo 58" by Jonathan Coe.

I knew I would like this book from its shamelessly retro cover and the knowingly B-movie enticement of the words printed below the title: "Spies, girls and an Englishman abroad. Trust no one." Except of course, this Englishman trusts everyone. But more of that anon.

In any case, this looked like excellent summer reading fare, and so it turned out to be, at the same time a cut or two above the Kingsley Amis style pastiche which it could have been - and which, frankly, would probably have kept me happy for a day or two anyway. I say that advisedly: ever since I greedily read PG Wodehouse novels as a teenager, I have harboured a weakness for tales of a rather innocent, terribly-English hi-jinks from a bygone age. At one level, Coe certainly delivers that: his protagonist is the quintessentially naive, rather staid young chap (barely conscious of his own extreme handsomeness - plot point there) thrown in way over his head to an exotic foreign world (Belgium!), teeming with glamorous women, Cold War intrigue, Russian spies and dangerous modernity. It is a world where an agreeable roommate is a "decent sort of cove", a young woman is encouraged to continue smoking during her pregnancy to calm her nerves, spies do wear raincoats and trilby hats and where an olive, let alone the dry martini into which it is dropped, is an impossibly decadent foreign novelty.

So far so pastiche, but, as I say, it goes a bit further than that.


This is probably the point at which I should confess that this is the first book by Jonathan Coe I have read. I mention this simply because the reviews of Expo 58 I have seen all compare and contrast it (more the latter) with his other work, often to point out the gentler, more restrained and guileless tone of this book. Sorry, but I can't really offer any thoughts on that, though I certainly will now explore some of his other work. In the meantime, this will be a standalone review of this book.

The "Britannia", a suitably modern
British pub. It really existed.

Expo 58 is the story of a young civil servant, Thomas Foley, living in Tooting with his young wife, Sylvia, and new baby, Gill, and working in the Central Office of Information, who is singled out for a rather special job, to oversee the operations of the British pub - the Britannia - which will operate as part of the British exhibit at the 1958 Brussels world fair. He owes this posting to the very qualities which make him "not quite one of us" in the ossified British Civil Service of the 1950s: he is a grammar school boy, son of a publican father and of a Belgian refugee mother. Anyway, with these qualifications, he is obviously perfect for the job of ensuring that the United Kingdom does not embarrass itself in Brussels, and so he sets off for a six-month stint in remote Brussels, leaving young wife and baby in Tooting. 

Three Expo 58 hostesses in front of the Atomium in
construction - one of them Anneke Hoskens?

Much of what follows draws comically and dramatically on the contrast between very different worlds, the bland, stolid, extremely dull world of 1950s conventionality, and the exciting, self-conscious modernity and internationalism of the Brussels World Trade Fair, hooked on visions of a glorious atomic future. At a personal level, this contrast challenges Thomas' world view and life choices almost immediately, notably in the form of the delightful Anneke Hoskens, the Expo 58 hostess who is assigned to look after the young British gentleman upon his first arrival and with whom an understated but unmistakably romantic friendship flourishes over the course of the novel, unimpeded by any mention by Thomas of his wife and child back in Tooting. Although he is able retrospectively to justify this omission to himself later, following the discovery of a (supposedly) tell-tale corn-plaster in his wife's bed (I'll leave that plot point for you to discover), his duplicitousness speaks rather ill of our hero, causes hurt to those who deserve no such hurt, and yet remains understandable in the clash between his buttoned-up world and the unreal freedom of Brussels. 

A naivety pervades all Thomas' relations with others. The cast of characters around him is diverse and comically rich: his jovial hail-fellow-well-met scientist roommate, Tony Buttress, the suave Russian propagandist, Andrey Chersky, the over-imbibing pub landlord, Mr Rossiter, the obliging barmaid, Shirley Knott (geddit? you will), the invasive Tooting neighbour, Mr Sparks, the ostentatious American "actress" and hoover demonstrator, Emily Parker, and a menagerie of British official types, most gleefully the MI6 duo of Mr Radford and Mr Wayne, whose occasional appearances are comic highlights of the novel and serve to remind us how far Thomas' perceptions lie from the Cold War skullduggery going on around him and in which he is playing a role he never really understands, at least this side of a revealing epilogue. 

It is the Brits - and their typically confused Britishness - who are principally on the receiving end of Coe's satire, others tend to be treated sympathetically. It is nice, for once, to see a British writer not poking gratuitous fun at Belgians - why, we have an unironic and unabashed Flemish Belgian romantic lead! - and one senses a genuine fascination and affection for the surreal delights and dated modernity of Expo 58. This is most obvious in the delight Coe takes in the Atomium, centrepiece of the Exhibition, in the novel itself, and to which he returns in the Author's Note at the end of the book:

Like many British people I was entirely unaware of the existence of this monument: it was just a rumour I had heard, and I had no idea of the retro-futurist splendours that awaited me. It is (as Thomas Foley finds) a staggering creation: epic in scale, brilliant in execution, at once touching, optimistic, absurd and surreal. It can only be Belgium's deep-rooted inability (or reluctance) to trumpet its tourist attractions that prevents the Atomium from being as well known as the Eiffel Tower, with which it is directly comparable.

Couldn't have put it better myself, and I have to say this novel had me reaching for the iPad to search for Google images of Expo 58, whose "retro-futurist" delights have an undeniable fascination for me too. 

But back to our story. Or not. Thomas Foley's comic ultimately rather melancholy personal tale is accompanied by a obliquely-related story of Cold War espionage. Perhaps a little more than Thomas himself, we are aware of something going on, but, to be honest, for me this was more part of the background to the personal story than the core of the novel. I'll leave it to you to discover if you read the book. 

Which - recommendation - I would suggest you do. 

Be transported to the not-so-innocent
delights of yesterday's future