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‘This is counter-factual history at
its best – drawing fresh but informed conclusions from
perfectly credible errors. Stimulating, provocative and playful,
What Might Have Been is everything one looks for in a collection
of essays.’
Graham Stewart, Literary
Review
‘The main object of these essays is to entertain, and
they do so handsomely. This book is a hymn to the accidental
and the erratic. Look on these works, ye Determinists and
Dialectical Materialists, and at least consider the possibility
that you might not be entirely right.’
Philip Ziegler, Daily
Telegraph
‘Moments when the fates of nations
seem to turn on the roll of a die, haunt the minds of the
twelve writers assembled for this intriguing and entertaining
anthology.’
Andrew Holgate, Sunday
Times
‘What Might Have Been is the latest
of a series of volumes in which a gifted team of authors envisages
alternative historical scenarios. As has become the custom
of the genre, some of the contributors submit sober and measured
assessments, while others spot a chance for playfulness.’
Blair Worden, Sunday
Telegraph
‘All twelve essays are good fun, and the will make the
reader think – and that is, after all, what all good
history, ‘factual’ or ‘counterfactual’,
should be about.’
T.G. Otte, Times
Literary Supplement
‘Since much history is happenstance,
what if happenings had turned out otherwise? Andrew Roberts
has recruited a dozen historians to pose, and answer, some
of these What Ifs, and some of their answers are as good as
the questions.’
Nicholas Harman, The
Spectator
‘Great fun. I enjoyed some of the chapters so much that
I shouted praise for its frivolous merits at my television
set when a young historian – arguing on Newsnight
with my old friend Christopher Andrew - denounced the whole
idea of ‘alternative history’.’
Roy Hattersley, The
Observer
‘Counterfactual history,
when deployed as expertly as it is here, reminds us that what
seems inevitable is actually often a matter of chance. This
might sound unsettling, until you realise it is actually liberating.’
Kathryn Hughes, Mail
on Sunday
‘What Might Have Been is much more
than a series of speculative essays; it shatters much conventional
wisdom about ‘the onward march of progress’. It
reminds us that we have an infinite number of possible futures.’
Andy Smith, The
Journal of Contemporary Journalism
‘Andrew Roberts has achieved
a remarkable coup in assembling some of our most stimulating
and provocative historians all in one book. Excellent.’
Tim Newark, Military
Illustrated
‘Andrew Roberts presents a compelling
case for counterfactual history. What Might Have Been is really
a lot of fun.’
John Geiger, National
Post
‘Far from being a harmless intellectual
pursuit, ‘what if’ history is pursuing a dangerous
rightwing agenda.’
The Guardian
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