The Untouchable
Untouchable, The (1997), a novel by John Banville, based on the Cambridge spy and art historian Anthony Blunt, and his experiences in the upper reaches of English society. Banville makes his Blunt-figure, Victor Maskell, Irish, and gives him a background very like that of Louis MacNeice, whom Blunt knew. A sombre novel, it emits a sad and despairing gloom to evoke the worlds of espionage and covert homosexuality.



