Nathan Hesketh

The Margin Notes

Everyone is lying. Some of them are good at it.

June 2025. A fictional general election, and a run of televised debates between five party leaders who each believe they can win, or at least survive.

Eleanor Marsh has moderated British political television for thirty years. She knows the pause before a dodged question, the rehearsed sincerity, the number that has been rounded to sound better. Her face gives none of it away.

Thirty years of a still face. Nobody asks what it costs.

Her notes do. In the margins, in a small italic hand, Eleanor writes down what is really happening on the stage in front of her.

A hotel desk at night: a dark blue leather folder holding handwritten notes, a manila envelope, bottles of water and a glass, and a grey jumper over the chair
Eleanor's hotel desk, debate week.

Folder, envelope, two bottles of water. The ritual doesn't change. The notes do.

In a community centre in Sheffield, on a Thursday afternoon in the middle of the campaign, a Member of Parliament opens a housing file. A family in temporary accommodation. Eighteen months. Two children. A landlord who has stopped answering letters.

Some files you have read before.

The Margin Notes is a novel about what gets said on live television, what doesn't, and the widening distance between the two.

The Margin Notes by Nathan Hesketh: five empty debate podiums under studio lights, and an open blue folder of notes marked in red pen

Out now on Kindle, in paperback and in hardback.

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