The New Confessions

The novel's protagonist, John James Todd, experiences a lonely childhood growing up with a father who is distant and cold towards him and a brother, Thompson Todd, who dislikes him intensely. His only solace is Oonagh, his nanny, who, although illiterate, has a sharp mind and acts as a kind of surrogate mother. His father, Innes McNeil Todd, is a senior consultant at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and University Professor. Todd's school years pass uneventfully until he decides to run away to visit his mother's sister, Faye, living in the south of England – a woman for whom he has developed a schoolboy crush as a consequence of their correspondence following her husband's death. During his stay, John James exposes himself at a picnic in Oxford and his aunt slaps him. Feeling disgraced, he enlists in the army and ends up on the Western Front.

Todd's war starts off fairly peacefully because he is stationed at Nieuport-les-Bains in Belgium at the extreme northern end of the front. His regiment – the 13th (Public School) service battalion of the Duke of Clarence's Own South Oxfordshire Light Infantry is composed of former public school pupils, none of whom Todd particularly likes apart from Leo Druce. Todd takes part in the attack and his company suffers over fifty percent casualties. On 22 August 1917 Todd is involved in a second attack. One of his mates tries to kill him (after a previous run in) but mistakenly kills Todd's lieutenant. Todd is finally rescued from the front by Donald Verulam, a friend of his father's, who enlists Todd into the WOCC (War Office Cinema Committee).

As a WOCC cameraman, Todd spends his time filming subjects that are worthy of propaganda value and is delighted when his first four reels of film of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry are shown to its officers in their battalion reserve billets. Whilst filming other regiments, Todd decides to make his own film of the true horrors of fighting but this is rejected by the censors for being unpatriotic and he is almost returned to the front line (unlike his rival, Harold Faithfull, who is much lauded for his artificially-shot 50 minute film, The Battle of Messines. Todd ends up as a prisoner in Weilberg, Germany and sinks into a profound depression until he befriends a German guard, Karl-Heinz, who, in return for kisses, smuggles him pages of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Les Confessions. Finishing it over a seven-week period, Todd weeps because he is so profoundly affected. Eventually, he is transferred to an officers' camp in Mainz for five months until the war's end.

The story moves forward to July, 1922 and Todd is now working for Superb-Imperial Films in Islington, London. Todd starts filming in and around Edinburgh, joined by his old friend Leo Druce as producer, whom he meets again at a regimental reunion and who is down on his luck. The film is a commercial success but his employer goes bankrupt. However, Todd receives a postcard from Karl-Heinz saying that he is making many films and plays in Berlin. He joins him, only to find that Karl-Heinz is just a bit-part extra, so Todd becomes the doorman at The Hotel Windsor and moves in with Karl-Heinz. Karl-Heinz starts to enjoy more success whilst Todd remains in a rut. One day Karl-Heinz presents Todd with a copy of Rousseau's Julie which the latter hates but turns into a film script. Liking it, Karl-Heinz introduces Todd to Duric Lodokian and his son, Aram – the Armenian owners of Realismus films – and they offer him a contract. Todd's prospects are now looking up and he is joined by Sonia and Vincent, their son, at his apartment at 129b on Rudolf Platz. All goes well until Todd encounters Doon Bogan, an American film star, who Karl-Heinz suggests play the lead role of Julie.

After their first meeting, Todd knows he is in love with Doon. However, whilst living with Sonia and his increasing family, he is able to keep his emotions in check. However, after one particularly successful scene while filming Julie, Todd makes his feelings known to her only to receive a knee in his groin. Todd bemoans his position to Karl-Heinz and he is only restored when he decides to make a film version of The Confessions. Now he is happier living at home and becomes very attached to his second son, Hereford, who is an engaging affectionate baby. He also rents a small wooden villa and has an affair with a German actress, Monika Alt. Doric Lodokian dies but extracts a promise from his son that Realismus will undertake the three films, each three hours long, of The Confessions. The Confessions: Part I starts to be filmed.

Doon and Todd finally make love and, on their return to Berlin, they carry on their affair intermittently until they are discovered by Sonia's private detective. Sonia announces she is divorcing him and returning to London with the children. Doon is offered a role by her ex-husband Mavrocordato in a new film. Todd's film is at last completed but Aram arrives (he now calls himself Eddie Simmonette) and thinks they are too late to market owing to the introduction of sound. Doon announces she is moving to Paris, disliking Germany because of its increasing Nazification, and Realismus films comes close to bankruptcy as a result of the 1929 Wall Street Crash. The Confessions: Part I debuts in the enormous Gloria-Palast Cinema on the Kurfurstendamm, accompanied by a 60-man orchestra, but the great auditorium is half empty for the gala and closes after a week.

Simmonette manages to scrape up enough money for The Confessions: Part 2 and filming starts at Neuchatel in January, 1934. However, it is beset by misfortunes and Simmonette finally arrives to say that the studios have been shut down and all his property impounded after his being declared a non-Aryan. Todd has a cold, comfortless meeting with Sonia and is forced to pay support. Todd returns to Edinburgh and has to go through the ritual of being caught in flagrante committing adultery so Sonia can divorce him. Todd is taken on by Courtney Young, the owner of Court Films, and is joined there once more by Leo Druce as his producer. Young is persuaded to finance The Confessions and pays Todd to work on the script of part II, but is then asked by his boss to direct a film about King Alfred. Following a meeting with Druce, he turns it down, only to find out the next day that Druce has been made its director and they have a furious falling out. Todd is sacked by Court Films and, with nowhere else to go, returns to Scotland. After failing to raise money for The Confessions: Part II, he relocates to Los Angeles but his position worsens when he becomes stuck without a visa in Tijuana, Mexico. Luckily, he meets a local newspaper proprietor and becomes a photographer for the Tijuana, Tecate, Rumorosa and Mexicali Clarions.

Between 1940 and 1943 Todd's fortunes look up. He is reunited with Eddie Simmonette in LA and he directs eleven Westerns, all under one hour long. He also re-encounters Mavrocordato, only to learn that Doon left him in France to return to the United States. He asks Ramon to try and track her down and learns that she is living in Montezuma, Arizona. After finishing his film, The Equaliser, he visits her, only to find an older, more cynical chain-smoking Doon who is completely different from the young woman he knew twenty years earlier. Determined to take a role in the war, he is sent by Ramon as a war correspondent to follow General Patch's 7th Army invasion of France's southern coast.

Todd returns to Berlin to look for Karl-Heinz and eventually tracks him down in a half-demolished church, suffering from stomach disorders. After flying to LA, they start filming Father of Liberty for Lone Star Films. However, everything changes when Simmonette asks to meet him secretly and they discuss the Hollywood Ten and Todd's listing in "Red Connections" as a communist. Taking advice from Simmonette's lawyer, he appears before the Brayfield subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee and pleads the Fifth Amendment. He is laid off by Simmonette and blacklisted by all the major studios. Eventually, he is named by Monika Alt and Ernest Cooper as a member of a revolutionary communist cell in Berlin in the 1920s. Todd gives a confident performance in front of the cameras and Doon perjures herself in order to save his skin. Todd knows he has been framed and hires a Japanese private detective to find out by whom. It turns out to be Monroe Smee, a nobody whom Todd met when he first came to the US and who he inadvertently offended by criticising his tacky scripts. Todd, after following Smee to the Red Connections office in West Hollywood, confronts his persecutor at his home but is thrown out.

Finally, fear of the Red Threat wanes and Todd once more takes up film directing. Karl-Heinz suffers from ill-health and is found dead in the Hotel Cythera. Retiring to a shack at Big Sur, Todd decides to have his private detective, O'Hara, get Smee off his back after he sees Smee observing him swimming. O'Hara misunderstands his instructions and kills Smee for a $1000 fee and, together, they dump the body over the edge off a cliff by the ocean. The novel comes to a close with Todd finishing his reminiscences at the Villa Luxe, a house he rents on a Mediterranean island from Simmonette, after fleeing the US.

The New Confessions, William Boyd, Penguin, 1999

• The Independent, "William Boyd: A chapter of accidents", 20 April 2002
• Penguin Books, The New Confessions