43 pages • 1-hour read
A Great Deliverance
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Background
Authorial Context: Elizabeth George and Inspector Lindsey
A Great Deliverance is the first novel by Elizabeth George. Born in Ohio and raised in California, George taught English before turning to fiction. Archival research, on-the-ground note taking, and interviews with police, lawyers, clergy, and residents help to provide her novels a feeling of authenticity. A Great Deliverance is also the first novel in the Inspector Lynley series, the success of which has defined much of George’s career. The Inspector Lynley series follows an ensemble through changing personal lives and changing times. At its center are Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, the Eighth Earl of Asherton, and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, a working-class Londoner who distrusts and challenges privilege. Recurring characters include forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James, photographer Deborah St. James, and Lady Helen Clyde, all three of whom are introduced in the first novel.
George uses crime to explore social fault lines. Well-Schooled in Murder (1988) takes readers into the culture of elite boarding schools. Missing Joseph (1993) scrutinizes the power dynamics of a country parish. Other novels move into London’s political world, immigrant communities on the southeast coast, or the backstage rooms of the performing arts. The crimes change, but the series’ commitments to Psychological realism, moral ambiguity, and a sense of English place remain constant.
Critics often highlight the interplay between Lynley and Havers as the engine that keeps the series fresh. He is educated, reflective, and accustomed to being heard. She is frank, impatient with politics, and brave in ways she does not always recognize. Their early friction is a study in British class relations that, over time, turns into a working friendship. Throughout the series, the characters stay true to themselves. Havers never becomes polished, and Lynley never stops the high-handed behavior associated with being a peer of the realm, but A Great Deliverance hints that both characters break free from the stereotypes associated with their social classes.
Sociohistorical Context: Thatcherism and Class Relations
When A Great Deliverance was published in 1988, Britain had spent nearly a decade under the leadership of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. By that time, the country had been remade with conservative policies that favored deregulation, privatized state industries, lowered taxes, and weakened trade unions. Finance and professional services grew while working-class manufacturing communities struggled. New fortunes sprouted quickly while old ways of life eroded.
Thatcherism shifted class identity in Britain. The old markers of accent, school ties, family name, and club membership remained meaningful, but a new rhetoric of individual achievement reframed mobility as a matter of will, and a new, self-made upper-middle class emerged. Right to Buy policies encouraged tenants to purchase council homes, making them homeowners and bumping them up to the middle class. But there was less mobility for that traditional working-class. The miners’ strike of 1984 to 1985 devastated communities in Yorkshire and other northern counties. Faith in institutions that had mediated political conflict faded under pressure. Churches, unions, and local councils lost ground to a centralizing state and an aggressive free market.
George sets A Great Deliverance in this political and socioeconomic milieu, with Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers representing the poles of class identity. He is an aristocrat in the Metropolitan Police, an Oxbridge man whose rank and ease reflect centuries of inherited confidence. She is a working-class Londoner from a much poorer background. Their friction is a map of class relations in transition. The Thatcher years promised that class would matter less, but in practice class continued to shape who gets listened to, who gets believed, and who gets blamed. The village of Keldale represents the rural communities in the North that were under economic strain during this period. Many young people, like Gillian, left for York or London for better opportunities.
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