Amsterdam

Amsterdam is set in the late 1990s, while the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party’s 18-year tenure was waning. This was an era dogged by a series of political scandals on which the press capitalized, which included allegations of corruption, financial misconduct, and sexual improprieties involving Members of Parliament (MPs). For example, the “cash-for-questions” scandal of 1994, which was exposed by The Guardian, revealed that MPs had accepted bribes from wealthy business interests to table questions in Parliament. A political lobbyist was quoted as saying: “You need to rent an MP just like you rent a London taxi” (Hencke, David. “Tory MPs were paid to plant questions says Harrods chief.” The Guardian, Oct. 20, 1994). Such revelations fostered widespread public cynicism and a climate of intense media scrutiny that blurred the lines between investigative journalism and political attack.

In Amsterdam, the character of Foreign Secretary Julian Garmony, a right-winger with “xenophobic and punitive opinions” (14), embodies a political establishment that the media was eager to expose. The plot, which hinges on publishing compromising photographs to ruin a politician, mirrors real-life events where the private lives of public figures became front-page news. McEwan satirizes this dynamic, showing how personal secrets can become weapons in both political and media battles.