Feel free to pick and choose — you don’t need to run every question in one sitting, though you will want time at the end to discuss what it means that a Liberal Party leader had his former lover almost killed, stood trial for conspiracy to murder, was acquitted by a jury, and that the dog died anyway.

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JOHN PRESTON AND THE BOOK: NON-FICTION AS DARK COMEDY
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  1. A Very English Scandal: The Book Behind the Series
    John Preston published A Very English Scandal in 2016, four decades after the Thorpe affair that it chronicles. Preston, who also wrote The Dig, brings to the Thorpe material the same quality of restrained, precise prose that characterized his Sutton Hoo novel, here applied to a story that is considerably more lurid: a Liberal Party leader, a former male lover, an incompetent assassination attempt, a dead dog, a trial, and an acquittal that left more questions than it answered. Did the book feel like journalism, biography, or something else — and did the material’s inherent absurdity sit comfortably inside Preston’s characteristically restrained style?
  2. Preston’s Two Subjects: The Scandal and the Era That Produced It
    Preston’s book is not only about Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott but about the specific social and political conditions that made the affair possible — the criminalization of homosexuality until 1967, the culture of elite impunity, the specific way that class and political power intersected in 1970s Britain to protect certain people from accountability. Did the book give this structural context sufficient weight, or did the story’s inherent farce occasionally crowd out the more serious political argument? And which version — the book’s non-fiction account or Davies’s dramatization — made the systemic dimensions of the scandal feel most clearly present?
  3. Norman Scott: The Book’s Most Complicated Figure
    Preston’s Norman Scott is a more ambiguous figure than the TV series’ — a man who is genuinely wronged, who has suffered real damage, and who is also difficult, self-dramatizing, and capable of his own forms of manipulation. The book holds this complexity without resolving it into either pure victim or unreliable hysteric. Did the book give Scott the full moral complexity his situation requires — someone who was genuinely victimized by the system that Thorpe personified and who responded to that victimization in ways that are sometimes hard to sympathize with? Did the series preserve this complexity, or did it simplify Scott into a more conventionally sympathetic figure?
  4. The Acquittal and Its Meaning: What Preston’s Book Leaves Unresolved
    Thorpe was acquitted in 1979, and the acquittal remains one of the most discussed verdicts in British legal history — widely understood at the time and since as a product of establishment protection rather than genuine doubt about his guilt. Preston’s book engages with this directly. Did the book’s account of the trial and acquittal make the verdict feel comprehensible as a historical event, or did it leave you with the same bafflement that contemporaries experienced? And which version made the acquittal feel most clearly like a scandal in itself?

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THE SERIES AND ITS FORM: TV DRAMA AS THE RIGHT MEDIUM
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  1. A Very English Scandal as Miniseries: Why Three Episodes and Not One Film
    The book became three BBC episodes rather than a theatrical film. The form lets Russell T Davies (writer) and Stephen Frears (director) give the affair’s full eighteen-year span more room than a film could accommodate, develop the Thorpe-Scott relationship over time, and render the specific texture of each period in more detail. Did the three-episode format feel like the right form for this material, or could it have been tightened into a film? And is there an argument that the Thorpe affair specifically benefits from the miniseries form — that the length and structure of the relationship between Thorpe and Scott requires duration to feel real?
  2. Russell T Davies’s Adaptation: The Comedy-Drama That Doesn’t Flinch
    Davies is known for his ability to hold multiple tones simultaneously — his Doctor Who, his Queer as Folk, his It’s a Sin all move between comedy and genuine feeling with apparent ease. A Very English Scandal requires exactly this: the Thorpe affair is simultaneously farcical (the incompetent gunman, the dog, the alibi) and genuinely serious (a man in power trying to have his former lover killed because of his sexuality). Did Davies find the right tonal balance — making you laugh at the absurdity without losing sight of the cruelty underneath it? And which version — Preston’s restrained prose or Davies’s more dramatically heightened script — held this tonal tension more successfully?
  3. Hugh Grant’s Jeremy Thorpe: The Performance That Redefined a Career
    Hugh Grant’s Thorpe is widely considered the finest performance of his career — a man of extraordinary charm and absolute ruthlessness, whose public warmth and private coldness are rendered as two expressions of the same total self-absorption. Did Grant find the right relationship between Thorpe’s genuine political charisma and the moral vacancy underneath it? And is there something specific Grant brings to this role — his long association with a certain kind of charming English leading man — that makes the performance work in ways another actor might not have achieved?
  4. Ben Whishaw’s Norman Scott: The Other Side of the Power Imbalance
    Whishaw’s Norman Scott is one of British television’s great recent performances — a man whose vulnerability and his ability to make himself impossible to ignore are the same quality, who has been genuinely damaged and who refuses to pretend otherwise. The series gives Scott considerably more sympathy than the establishment figures of the period were willing to extend to him. Did Whishaw’s performance give Scott the dignity the book argues he was denied, or did the series occasionally tip into making him so sympathetic that it smoothed away his own considerable difficulties?
  5. The Supporting Cast: The Conspiracy That Required a Village
    The series populates Thorpe’s conspiracy with a remarkable supporting cast — the party grandees, the loyal friends, the incompetent hired killers, the lawyers, the judges. Did the series give these figures sufficient individuality to feel like real people rather than stock figures in a political farce? And which supporting character — in either the book or the series — felt most like the story’s third major figure after Thorpe and Scott?

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POWER, SEXUALITY, AND 1970s BRITAIN
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  1. The Criminalization of Homosexuality: The Context That Made Everything Possible
    The entire Thorpe-Scott relationship — its secrecy, Thorpe’s power over Scott, the blackmail, the conspiracy — was made possible by the criminalization of homosexuality before 1967 and the social stigma that persisted long after legalization. Scott could threaten Thorpe with exposure precisely because exposure would destroy a man’s life. Did either version make this legal and social context feel fully present as the condition of everything that followed, or did the story’s personal drama occasionally overshadow the political structure that enabled it?
  2. Class and Impunity: The Specific British Scandal
    The title’s “very English” is doing specific work — this is a scandal that could only have happened in Britain in this specific form, because it depends on the specific way that class, establishment loyalty, and a certain kind of gentlemen’s agreement about protecting one’s own operated in 1970s British public life. Did either version make the specifically English dimensions of the scandal feel genuinely present, or did it occasionally feel like a more generic story about power and hypocrisy that could have happened anywhere? And how does the story travel to an international audience that doesn’t share the cultural context?
  3. Thorpe’s Sexuality: The Man Who Would Not Be Defined By It
    One of the most interesting dimensions of both versions is Thorpe’s own relationship to his sexuality — he is not, in either version, primarily a man tormented by his desires but a man for whom desire is simply one more thing to be managed in service of his ambitions. Did either version engage adequately with this dimension of Thorpe’s psychology — the man for whom his sexuality was a logistical problem rather than an identity? And is this specifically historical — a product of the era before gay identity politics — or something more particular to Thorpe?
  4. Scott’s National Insurance Card: The Bureaucratic Detail That Underpinned Everything
    One of the affair’s most remarkable elements is that Norman Scott’s grievance began with a National Insurance card — a bureaucratic document that Thorpe had promised to help him obtain and never did, leaving Scott unable to work legally. This detail is both quintessentially English and a precise metaphor for the power differential the affair embodied. Did either version give the National Insurance card the weight it deserves — as both a real grievance and a symbol of exactly what Thorpe owed Scott and refused to give him?

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PAGE VS. SCREEN: WHOSE SCANDAL WAS MORE SCANDALOUS?
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  1. Preston’s Prose: What the Non-Fiction Account Gives You
    Preston’s book gives you the archival depth of the Thorpe affair — the documents, the trial transcripts, the specific chronology of events across eighteen years. Were there elements of the book’s non-fiction account that the series’ more dramatic approach set aside and whose absence you felt? Name one thing Preston’s book gave you about the affair that the series’ dramatization couldn’t accommodate.
  2. Scenes the Series Staged Better Than the Book Described
    Name one moment where Davies’s writing and Stephen Frears’ direction gave you something Preston’s restrained prose couldn’t: a Grant performance, a Whishaw scene, a moment of comic timing that made the farce land perfectly, a scene that made the cruelty underneath the comedy feel most present. Which dramatic moment felt like the ideal version of what this story needed?
  3. The Miniseries and the Book as Complements: Do They Need Each Other?
    A Very English Scandal feels like a case where the book and the series are genuinely complementary — the book’s archival rigor and structural analysis alongside the series’ dramatic heat and tonal intelligence. Did you find that reading the book and watching the series gave you something qualitatively richer than either alone? And is there a specific element — a character, an episode, a historical dimension — where you needed both versions to understand what happened and why it mattered fully?

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OVERALL ADAPTATION VERDICT: HOW VERY ENGLISH WAS IT?
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  1. One of British Television’s Great Recent Productions
    A Very English Scandal was widely regarded on its 2018 release as one of the finest British television productions of recent years — praised for its performances, its writing, and its tonal intelligence. Does it deserve this reputation? And is the miniseries form itself part of why it succeeded — that the Thorpe affair required the space three episodes provide, and that compressing it into a single film would have cost something essential?
  2. What Each Version Does Best
    One gold star for the book, one for the series. They don’t have to be for the same thing. (Suggested categories: Best Non-Fiction Account of a Political Scandal That Is Also a Dark Comedy About Class and Impunity; Best Performance of Charm as a Form of Sociopathy; Best Tonal Management of a Story That Is Simultaneously Very Funny and Genuinely Appalling; Best Bureaucratic Detail Elevated to a Symbol of an Entire Power Relationship; Best Adaptation That Made the Right Choice in Going to Television Rather Than Cinema.)
  3. Recommend: Read, Watch, or Both?
    If a friend had time for only one version — Preston’s book or Davies and Frears’ series — which would you send them to first, and why? Would your answer change if they want the full archival depth and structural analysis of the affair? If they want Grant and Whishaw’s performances and Davies’s tonal intelligence? If they’re not British and want the cultural context explained before the drama begins? And is there a case that the series should come first — that having Grant’s Thorpe and Whishaw’s Scott as your reference points makes Preston’s more measured account feel richer and more pointed?
  4. Final Club Gut Check
    On the dial from “perfect page-to-screen translation” to “a Stephen Frears miniseries that took a meticulously researched non-fiction book and made it into something warmer, funnier, and more emotionally immediate while preserving its central argument about power and its protections,” where does A Very English Scandal land? And the question Preston’s book and Frears’ series both keep pressing in their different registers: what does it mean that a man who tried to have someone killed because of what that person knew about him was acquitted by a British jury, went on to live out his days in relative comfort, and that the political and social system that enabled all of it was never really called to account? Did either version make you feel that this question has been answered — or just that it’s a very English way of not answering it?

Use, tweak, or mash these questions as needed — your club, your scandal.