Morality plays began in the Middle Ages. They were intended to explain Christian precepts and encourage a mostly illiterate audience to lead a Godly life. Typically, they describe the progress of an Everyman who falls into temptation and then is redeemed.
In modern times it’s our newspapers who stage our morality plays. The press coverage of the expenses scandal in 2009 and 2010 was certainly strong on MPs falling into temptation. There wasn’t much about redemption, though.
I recently wrote a novella about the subject of guilt, and its corrosive effects on memory and personality, and I decided to use the expenses scandal as the locus for these ideas. As I researched it — although I suspect much of it is still as fresh in your minds as it was in mine — I imagined the expenses scandal from the point of view of a Member of Parliament: in this case a rather unexciting (and wholly fictional) backbencher.
I tried to describe someone who has worked tirelessly for his party and his country for most of his life.
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