It's a battlefield.

Description

"It's a Battlefield is both a suspense story and a serious novel, tense and probing. the keynote is set in a quotation from Kinglake at the beginning of the volume: 'In so far as the battlefield presented itself to the bare eyesight of men, it...was made up of nothing except small numberless circlets...each separate gathering...went on fighting it's own little battle in a happy and advantageous ignorance of the general state of the action....' these 'circlets' began with the killing of a policeman at a political rally in Hyde Park. Drover, a bus driver with Communist leanings, had struck the blow when he thought the policeman was going to injure his wife. The Minister would like to grant a reprieve, but thousands of laborers were on the verge of a crippling strike; a reprieve would indicate weakness on the part of the Minister. On the other hand, if Drover were executed and the workers retaliated it would cost the country millions of pounds--and the Minister would probably lose the next election. Then in one way or another Drover's family and dozens of figures on the outside became involved in the drama; in one way or another each life was changed."--