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  The idea that historical novels "contain allusions to the world in which and for which they were written" is easily applied to I, Claudius  (1934) and Claudius the God (1934). Robert Graves wrote his Claudian books at a time of building political unrest, when the threat of national dictatorships was no longer theoretical. World War One saw off a number of Europe's traditional autocrats ― Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm, Austro-Hungary's Emperor Franz-Joseph, Russia's Tsar Nicholas ― with their realms dismembered and rearranged as separate states by the Treaty of Versailles. This did not bring the expected peace and security. In the wake of bankrupt monarchies, elected governments struggled. New authoritarian leaders rose up to replace them ― Il Duce! Der Fuhrer! Comrade Party Secretary ― modern political tyrannies aiming to redraw post-war boundaries.       "Like many other English intellectuals of this period, [author Robert Graves] was concerned by the wors...

America's much-vaunted principle of personal freedom has produced a combustible mix of the very best and the very worst that humankind is capable of. Dashiell Hammett, "the dean of hard-boiled detective fiction", was aware of this contradiction. In novels like Red Harvest (1929) and The Glass Key  (1931), he places his 'anti-heroes' in the very centre of self-interested politics. During the Interwar years, American cities were notorious for their dysfunction. Newspaper readers in the States and the rest of the industrialised world were familiar with the legislative failure of Prohibition. Gangster violence and police corruption seemed to be the natural condition of life in the land of the free. In Red Harvest  an unnamed operative for the Continental Detective Agency (San Francisco Branch) is sent to Pearsonville. The man who he is supposed to see is already dead. What follows is a process of civic cleansing by blood-bath. Pearsonville is a dirty town, owned in ev...