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Throughout history, great and terrible events
have often hinged upon sheer luck. Tiny changes to great enterprises
can produce profoundly different results. We all ask ‘what
might have been?’ about our own lives, now Andrew Roberts
has assembled a team of twelve leading historians and biographers
and asked them what might have happened if major world events
had gone differently?
Each concentrating in the area in which
they are a leading authority, historians as distinguished
as Antonia Fraser, Norman Stone and Anne Somerset look at
vital moments of history and consider: ‘What Might Have
Been?'
In her first publication since her acclaimed
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Amanda Foreman
looks at what might have happened if Lincoln’s Northern
States of America and Lord Palmerston’s Great Britain
had gone to war, as they so nearly did in 1861. Whether it’s
Stalin fleeing Moscow in 1941, as imagined by Simon Sebag
Montefiore, or Napoleon not being forced to retreat from it
in 1812, as recorded by Adam Zamoyski, the events covered
here are important, world-changing ones.
George W. Bush’s former White House
advisor David Frum considers a President Al Gore’s response
to 9/11, while Simon Heffer posits a Heseltine premiership
had Margaret Thatcher been assassinated by the I.R.A. in Brighton.
Conrad Black wonders how the United States might have entered
the Second World War if the Japanese had not bombed Pearl
Harbor.
All twelve essays are thought-provoking
and scholarly, some of them posit a fascinating and often
horrifying parallel universe – a universe that so easily
just might have been.
They include: WHAT
IF...
THE SPANISH ARMADA LANDED
IN ENGLAND ...
Anne Somerset
THE GUNPOWDER PLOT SUCCEEDED
...
Antonia Fraser
KING CHARLES I WON THE CIVIL
WAR ...
John Adamson
GREAT BRITAIN WON THE AMERICAN
WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Robert Cowley
NAPOLEON TRIUMPHED IN RUSSIA
...
Adam Zamoyski
THE TRENT INCIDENT HAD LED
TO WAR ...
Amanda Foreman
ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND
SURVIVED SARAJEVO
Norman Stone
LENIN WAS ASSASSINATED AT
THE FINLAND STATION
Andrew Roberts
STALIN FLED MOSCOW IN 1941
...
Simon Sebag Montefiore
THE JAPANESE DID NOT ATTACK
PEARL HARBOR ...
Conrad Black
THE BRIGHTON BOMB KILLED
MARGARET THATCHER
Simon Heffer
102 CHADS FELL OFF IN FLORIDA
David Frum
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