I used to read Alternate Histories often. I devoured the works of Harry Turtledove, I worked my way through Harry Harrison, and even some of Stirling before I could no longer stomach him I read the Man in the High Castle before the TV series made its debut. Bring the Jubilee, The Last Article. The classics if you will. At one point people thought that Alternate History would eclipse SF and Fantasy and become the genre, in genre fiction
But it gets boring tho, and this book illustrates the problem with alternate history. It's become Nazi misery porn. The book does a good job of using the world building to create a London and a 1950s that almost happened. A.J.P Taylor was arrested at a protest in Trafalgar square. Frankie Howard is still in Pompeii. The fog is everywhere. Jive boys which are this world's version of the Teddy boy are fighting with Blackshirts, and Auxiliaries Soho has been cleared of Maltese, and Italians So no Gracie Fields? There is no rationing but the toy soldiers in the shops are SS fighting Partisans. Marie Stopes and the Eugenics movement being more prominent in British life is road which we will travel down here
The writer - A British leftist gets his shots in, at the SNP. Yes there were some who would have collaborated. He does go on about it. There is a dig at Miss Jean Brodie too
It would have been unlikely that Devalera would still have been in power in Ireland in 1952.
Well so how did we get here?.... The UK, made a dishonourable peace with Hitler, after the debacles at Norway and Dunkirk. The British get off reasonably lightly The Isle of Wight becomes a German concession. Over time, the treaty becomes an end rather than the means to an end. We know a lot of the supporting characters. David Lloyd George, was Britain's Petain and Beaverbrook crossed the floor or perhaps the barricades to lead a collaborationist government. I suspect this is meant by the author as a dig at the British tabloids too. I actually disagree about this. The British tabloids act as a break on state power
Powell is secretary for India, there will be no partition. Rather the Muslim league is allied to the British India is the Ireland of
There is no Mau Mau uprising, instead, British families are given a few month's lessons in farming and sent to Rhodesia and Kenya The Commonwealth is still there. Australia has walked away. Canada is looking at her watch, and eyeing the door while the Mother country gets sicker and sicker in the bed she made. South Africa is relishing the world turned upside down. New Zealand being quite smug and pious from several thousand miles away. Ireland should actually still be a Dominion as it happens
Civil service messengers are still in Brown overalls, and ladies leave the service on marriage. A lot of action takes place at Senate house. There will even be a pitched battle between SS and Wehrmacht elements off-screen.
But it's boring and miserable. We are supposed to care about one of the protagonists who is also the Maguffin. He is a nuclear physicist whose brother has worked out a way to make Nuclear weapons cheaper.
But so what...
Yes, I get the idea of seeing the world of Absolute Beginners, Adam Faith, and Dixon of Dock Green with informer nets, round-ups, and razor wire. But haven't we seen that all before?
