Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #307830 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Synopsis
The grand passage of political history is steered by a combination of events great and small, assessing how matters might have turned out under different circumstances is one of the most intriguing - and entertaining - historical exercises. What if Lenin's train had crashed on the way to the Finland Station? If Lee Harvey Oswald had missed, would JFK have become one of the greatest US Presidents, or one of the worst? What if John Smith had not died suddenly in 1994? In this book a collection of distinguished commentators consider how things might have been otherwise. Among them are Sir Bernard Ingham, who ponders the consequences of Margaret Thatcher's resignation over the Westland crisis; John Charmley, who asks, 'What if Lord Halifax had become Prime Minister in 1940 instead of Churchill?'; and Anne Perkins, who wonders how the history of the Labour Party would have unfolded had Aneurin Bevan outlived Hugh Gaitskell.

Diverting and thought-provoking as they can be, counterfactuals also have a serious historical purpose, for close examination of what did not happen serves to test interpretations of what actually did happen, and provides a prism through which the great events can be viewed. It is not only Michael Portillo who is left to ponder what might have been ...

Customer Reviews

Clever and entertaining collection of political counterfactuals
"Prime Minister Portillo" is a collection of 21 essays each of which postulates one change to 20th century political history between 1918 and 1997, and looks at how a different sequence of events might have followed. Twenty of them look at British political history: the exception, written by the Conservative MP Simon Burns, asked "What if Lee Harvey Oswald had missed?" (e.g. failed to kill Kennedy.)

Counterfactual history is a rapidly growing market. Both "alternative history" fiction such as most of the work of Harry Turtledove, and slightly more serious analysis of what might have happened, such as Cowley's "What If" or Niall Ferguson's "Virtual History" have been very popular.

Most works of counterfactual history have concentrated on what might have happened if wars had gone differently. "Prime Minister Portillo and other things which never happened" and the sequel, "President Gore and things which never happened" are unusual in that they concentrate on political decisions or elections which might have gone differently.

The contributors cover an eclectic range of political views and backgrounds, from academics to MPs and senior public servants such as Sir Bernard Ingham who used to be Margaret Thatcher's press secretary. Some of the essays are extremely serious, others have more than a dash of humour or whimsy. Almost all are thought provoking.

What some readers will find a strength, and others a weakness, is that many of the contributors were unable to resist the temptation of including a few "in jokes" about some of the characters in the story. For example, in the title essay, Iain Dale was unable to resist referring to David Davies MP as "the Conservatives' thuggish chief whip" - evidently a comment understood on both sides to have been made with his tongue firmly in his cheek, as it did not prevent David Davies from offering or Iain Dale from accepting a position as Davies' chief of staff a few months later during his Conservative Leadership bid.

If you have a strong interest in counterfactual history, or in 20th century politics, or both, you will probably greatly enjoy this book. If you don't have either of those specialist interests, leave it alone.