US Edition The story of this book is a fascinating one, and Tim Coates has done a remarkable job in excavating it from where it lay buried, incomplete and in pieces, within official archives. An editor of historic documents, he found this single terse sentence in a government publication dating from the First World War: "In the matter of Second Lieutenant Patrick Barrett, no more will be said." Coates saw a challenge in this impregnable statement. He took it on.
When the First World War began, Patrick Barrett was a 23-year-old sergeant with the Royal Welch Fusiliers. A few months into the war he was sent home, having scrabbled his way out of a trench near Ypres over the bayoneted corpses of his friends. Wounded and shell-shocked, with no family of his own, Barrett was taken to convalesce at the Welsh home of a Mr and Mrs Birch. It was there that he met Mary Cornwallis-West , whose husband employed Mr Birch as a land agent.
Mrs Cornwallis-West - always known as Patsy - was in her fifties by this time, but she was one of those women with an imperishable allure. Born into an upper-class Irish family, the daughter of a mistress of Prince Albert, she herself became the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales when she was just 16.
She was swiftly married off to Colonel Cornwallis-West, a loyal and decent man of approximately twice her age. The Cornwallis-Wests had three houses and three children, any number of whom may have been the offspring of the Prince of Wales.
For Coates, the gorgeous spectacle of Patsy - that leapt out from the faded documents of the Public Records Office - must have seemed like the greatest of gifts. With her came a wealth of colourful connections. She was close not just to the Prince of Wales but to Lillie Langtry; one of her daughters married the Duke of Westminster, the other - somewhat unfortunately - a German prince. Meanwhile, her ne'er-do-well son, George, took as his first wife Winston Churchill's mother, Jennie, then married the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell.
This was the world inhabited by Patsy Cornwallis-West - impeccably connected, mondaine, sexually lawless - and Coates does an understated job of contrasting it with the world of Barrett, who since the age of 11 had known nothing except the Royal Welch Fusiliers. This, then, is the backdrop to the story, which is perfectly set up in the first chapters of the book.
When it gets seriously under way, things become a little more problematical. At the heart of the story is a brief encounter between Patsy and Barrett, the consequences of which - inflamed by various jealousies and misunderstandings - were unpredictable, uncontrollable and wildly disproportionate. They led to a crisis in the War Office, and a consequent court of inquiry in whose findings Lloyd George himself took a concerned interest.
In the course of events Barrett suffered because, despite having been given an officer's commission, he was still treated as a member of the lower orders. Patsy suffered as well: she may have been worshipped for her sex appeal, but she was still treated as an aristocratic tart. They were pawns in a larger game, in which a government under the cosh tried desperately to save its own face at their expense. That seems to be the message of Coates's book, and it remains relevant.
Yet the way in which the message is conveyed does not quite convince. Coates is rigorously determined to remain objective about his story, to resist "too much interpretation, too much judgment". This is admirable in intent, but frankly the book could do with a bit more of a narrative voice, not least because its "objectivity" is at times a bit of a cheat. Coates does interpret - he has to, since he is piecing together a human drama from letters and documents.
This intriguing book should have been taken on a stage further, and written not with the rustle of research ever present in the background, but as a story in its own proud right: truly the story of Mary Cornwallis-West. "Why are you asking me this? Do you want me to explain to you about feelings?" she says to the court of inquiry that is asking about the nature of her relationship with Patrick Barrett. "Do you not know about caring for someone?" When her brave Irish voice is heard, with its singular sound and morality, this book comes fully alive.