The Ministry of Manners

The Ministry of Manners Synopsis

Be quiet. Be polite. Or be silenced.

Alfie and Margot Hawthorne have grown up under the Ministry of Manners, where politeness isn't a choice - it's the law. And one wrong word can change your life. He knows how to stay out of trouble, but she has never been one for quiet obedience.

When the Ministry takes Margot, everything changes. Inside the Manners Retreat, she fights to stay herself in a place built to erase her. Meanwhile, Alfie falls in with the Unsilenced - those who still dare to speak. But the Ministry has plans of its own. And if they succeed, rebellion won't just be punished. It'll be impossible.

A letter from the author:

Dear Reader,

Every country tells itself a story about who it is and what it values. Ours tends to involve queueing, tea and pretending everything is fine.

The Ministry of Manners began with a title – the kind that sounds faintly absurd until it doesn’t. From that joke, a world took shape: a Britain where politeness has become policy and good behaviour isn’t encouraged but enforced. It’ s recognisable, only tidier. More efficient. Less forgiving.

At the heart of it are two children, Alfie and Margot. Their parents work for the Ministry; their lives are comfortable, correct and watched. When Margot begins to ask questions, her brother wants to keep her safe – from trouble, from embarrassment, from herself. But truth has a way of untidying everything it touches.

What begins as a story about good manners becomes one about courage, loyalty and the quiet rebellion that begins inside a family. The kind that changes everything without meaning to.

Alfie and Margot bear my own children’s middle names, which feels fitting. As a parent, I think a lot about the diference between asking them to be good and asking them to obey. It’s a smaller gap than it looks. That’s where stories like this live.

I wanted to explore the line between order and control, and how easy it is to mistake one for the other. The tone may be dystopian but the impulse behind it isn’t grim. The world is absurd, even at its darkest, and humour – like decency – can be an act of defiance.

I hope readers will find something of themselves in Alfie and Margot: the instinct to ask why, and the fear of what the answer might cost.

With gratitude for your time and attention, and with the utmost propriety - David Solomons