“It all seems extraordinarily different,” May said of today’s city. “As I walk around, I see little pockets of the old Brussels that seem vaguely familiar but there’s been so much new build. It just seems to have evolved and changed and grown.”
One thing that hasn’t changed: Britain is still arguing over EU membership — a background theme in May’s story. Despite being a committed Europhile, May said he didn’t want to send a political message with the book. Brussels just seemed a topical setting for a thriller at the time.
“Storytelling is all about the special lead characters at the end of the day,” he said. “It was important to come here, also to meet the kind of characters who were populating this place at the time.”
Prominent among those characters were journalists. “They were a real cynical bunch,” May recalled. “A lot of them seemed more interested in drinking and eating and having a good time than rooting around and finding good stories.”
to decide whether that has changed in the intervening years. (For the record: May’s book was first published long before Boris Johnson’s stint as an EU correspondent.)
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