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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
By Paul Torday, Orion Books, ISBN 978-0-297-85158-5, £12.99.
When
I first heard the title of this book I immediately thought crazy idea,
salmon fishing in the Yemen is impossible for all sorts of practical
scientific reasons, searing desert heat and no water constituting number one
and two on the list. Torday tackles these practical scientific issues and
more in his engrossing book turning it into a golden brown slice of buttered
toast to carry the marmalade of his tale of Whitehall intrigue and
government spin.
The book exposes in a series of disembodied Emails, letters, witness interview transcripts and diary entries how the Prime Minister comes to be drowned in a flash flood while posing for a photo opportunity during a salmon fishing trip on an artificial river in Northern Yemen.
Dr Alfred Jones, a fisheries scientist with DEFRA is asked if he thought it would be possible to create a sustainable salmon fishery in the Yemen. Funded by the oil rich Sheikh Muhammad the project was intended to transplant what he perceived as the classless bonhomie 'all Jock Tamsons Bairns' spirit of the Scottish fishing fraternity to the Middle East thus surmounting the social issues destabilising the region. Jones thought the project impossible. His negative response to what could become a very lucrative project fell foul of his bosses and subsequently the political establishment ‘at the highest level’. Serious pressure was brought to bear until Jones had his epiphany becoming a central proponent of the project, i.e. he became a potential scapegoat.
A chain of events unfolds taking the reader into the bureaucratic wrangling of the civil service over funding and budgets, Government spin, al Qaeda assassination plots, military incursions into Iran, more government spin and the eventual construction of an artificial river in Yemen stocked with farmed salmon which led to the demise in an angling debacle of the Prime Minister, the Sheik and his faithful Highland ghillie .
I found the book to be a ‘can’t put down read’, humorous and strangely plausible describing our national system of government driven by money grabbing, political sound bites and photo opportunities, Whitehall intrigue, evasion and spin, international terror and 20/20 hindsight.
Paul Torday brings to angling literature his passion for the sport, the potential of the angling lobby if it ever chooses to sully its wellies in the Whitehall mire, a touch of 007, and an incisive description of how disembodied communications can lead men of wealth, power and aspirations into the realms of improbability. A crazy idea for a book? Folks we are the great unwashed who are asked to believe that the Iran/Iraq terrorism situation is all about freedom, democracy and humanitarian concerns and nowt to do with oil, crazy init?.
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – a jolly good read.
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