The Untouchable is a 1997 novel by the Irish author John Banville

John Banville

John Banville is an Irish novelist and screenwriter.Banville's breakthrough novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011...

. The book is written as a roman à clef

Roman à clef

Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...

, presented from the point of view of the art historian, double agent and homosexual Victor Maskell—a character based on the life of Cambridge spy

Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian talent spotter Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and at least into the early 1950s...

 Anthony Blunt

Anthony Blunt

Anthony Frederick Blunt , was a British art historian who was exposed as a Soviet spy late in his life.Blunt was Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London...

, as well as on elements from the life of Irish poet Louis MacNeice

Louis MacNeice

Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...

. The character of Guy Burgess is prominent and easily identifiable, that of Maclean plays a minor role only.

The Untouchable is both comical and poignant in its delineation of the importance of double agents in the Cold War—Maskell's revelations to the Russians largely involve information of little importance or facts that appear shortly afterwards in national newspapers. The secrecy around Blunt's homosexual personal life is depicted as a balance to his role as a spy, and when homosexuality is legalised he loses a great deal of his enjoyment of his double life.

Like Blunt, Maskell is connected to the royal family and the book carries portraits of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and less directly of Elizabeth II (usually referred to as 'Mrs W.'). Maskell indicates that he suspects the presence of a concealed or perhaps sublimated homosexuality in the life and personality of George VI. Blunt himself was a cousin of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (Queen Elizabeth, later 'the Queen Mother'), and this is something that as 'Maskell' he refers to several times in the novel. Maskell undertakes a secret mission to occupied Germany to rescue some documents which could prove embarrassing to the British royal family as they indicate the extent of King Edward VIII's (later the Duke of Windsor) contact with the Nazis. He goes on to become keeper of the royal family's art collection, as did Blunt.

Blunt was actually educated at Marlborough College, where he joined the college's secret 'Society of Amici' in which he was a contemporary of Louis MacNeice (whose unfinished autobiography The Strings are False contains numerous references to Blunt). Like Maskell, he later read mathematics at university, becoming a Fellow of his college, and a member of the Cambridge Apostles, a secret society which at that time was largely Marxist, formed from members of Cambridge University.

Banville himself said that the motivation to write the book came from seeing Blunt smile to himself when not aware of being on camera, just before giving a press conference following the announcement to the British House of Commons (by prime minister Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

) of his role as the 'fourth man' in the Burgess-Maclean-Philby spying ring. The small secret smile, said Banville in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, was the smile of a man who had been interrogated by the British secret services and dealt with a Soviet minder for years, and who knew he had nothing to fear from a roomful of journalists.

The book was added to the New York Times Notable Books list and the Library Journal Best Books

Library Journal

Library Journal is a trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey . It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice...

list for 1997.