The Doctor Is In… Demand

Lara Prescott’s novel The Secrets We Kept tells the story of how Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago became a political weapon during the Cold War, through the eyes of women working on both sides of the conflict

- Bruce Dennill

The notion of a novel being an important political tool is almost impossible to imagine nowadays. Did the reality of that being the case with Doctor Zhivago lead to a different mindset as a writer, working on The Secrets We Kept?

Lara Prescott I was drawn to this incredible story because of the notion that books could change the world – that’s what both the CIA and the Soviets felt. I come from a political campaigning background, so I have a lifelong interest in propaganda. And books have changed my own life in profound ways. You develop an empathy for people you read about or share something with through literature, and that’s dangerous for the status quo. Reflect on the equivalent nowadays: fake news, Twitter bots and all the rest. Then, they were playing more of a long game, planting a seed and seeing what happened. It was instant, and they couldn’t just blast a message out all over the world.