The Prime Ministers Who Never Were
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £1.30
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Prime Ministers Who Never Were... for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £1.30, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Review
'The idea of Norman Tebbitt succeeding Thatcher in 1989, beating the IRA and walking away from Europe is capable of sending a shiver down the spine, even at this distance of time and reality.'
--Independent
--Independent
Product Description
It has long been said that the largest political club is that of ex future Prime Ministers to which Francis Beckett has nominated fourteen of us in this book. We know what really happened in the years we might have held office, but that was scarcely more likely that what might have been, and these speculations are perhaps more than just fun. They may be food for thought. NORMAN TEBBIT Each of these chapters in this book of political counterfactuals describes a premiership that never happened, but might easily have done had the chips fallen slightly differently. The contributors, each of them experts in political history, have asked themselves questions like: what shape would the welfare state and the cold war have taken if the Prime Minister had been Herbert Morrison instead of Clement Attlee? What would have been consequences for Northern Ireland had Norman Tebbit succeeded Margaret Thatcher? How would our present life be different without New Labour a name we would never have heard if either Kinnock or Smith had become Prime Minister and not Tony Blair? Each of the chapters in this book describes events that really might have happened. And almost did.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If only one crucial detail in history had turned out differently... such is the premise of many a work of fiction, especially counter-factual histories and time travelling science fiction tales. Yet for all the popularity of the well known piece of verse, "For the want of a nail the shoe was lost..." which culminates in a kingdom being lost, serious counter-factuals by experts in a field are rather rare.
Those who see themselves as proper academics have often looked down on counter-factuals as light entertainment for the not-so-serious, missing that, as The Guardian's review of this book put it, "It's only when you consider how to manipulate the conditions to create an alternative future that the factors that shape outcomes become clearer".
So Francis Beckett's collection is a welcome publication not only for adding to small collection of British political counter-factuals but also for having such a heavyweight list of contributors.
By focusing on senior politicians who never quite made it to 10 Downing Street, this collection benefits from being mostly dependent on tiny twists in fate which it is extremely easy to imagine having happened - a slight shift in MP votes in a leadership election or a sudden death that did not occur. It is a serious collection with serious tales, but some authors let a little light mischief slip into their stories as with the idea of a Tony Blair Home Secretary under Prime Minister John Smith being wheeled out to dismiss as vacuous the "Third Way" being pushed by opposition leader Michael Portillo.
Historians and others perennially debate how much influence individuals can really have on events in the face of bigger forces, and these chapters do a good attempt at making the case. In particular, the fact that Halifax almost certainly could have become Prime Minister in 1940 if he had really wanted to, but instead at a crucial meeting with Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill did not press his own case, makes for a fascinating what-if from Hugh Purcell. Even Churchill, one of the figures most likely to be put in the "big enough character to change events" category was subject to such small twists of fate.
Many of the chapters take familiar what-ifs - what if John Smith had not died suddenly, what if the Tories had won a handful fewer seats in 1992 and so on - but there are also some strikingly original ideas, including Peter Cuthbertson's story of Mrs Thatcher anticipating her demise and campaigning successfully to be succeeded by Norman Tebbit.
The subtlety with which events are initially shifted in these counter-factuals is both a strength - it makes the exercise of pondering "what if." all the more poignant and insightful - but also a weakness, at least for the non-expert reader. Unlike volumes such as President Gore...: and Other Things That Never Happened (to which I contributed a chapter on the 1832 Great Reform Act), this volume does not provide any commentary on what has been changed in the alternative histories. If you are not familiar with the details, where facts stop and fiction starts is easy to miss in many cases so whilst you enjoy reading this book, having some reference books or the internet to hand may well enhance the enjoyment.
Those who see themselves as proper academics have often looked down on counter-factuals as light entertainment for the not-so-serious, missing that, as The Guardian's review of this book put it, "It's only when you consider how to manipulate the conditions to create an alternative future that the factors that shape outcomes become clearer".
So Francis Beckett's collection is a welcome publication not only for adding to small collection of British political counter-factuals but also for having such a heavyweight list of contributors.
By focusing on senior politicians who never quite made it to 10 Downing Street, this collection benefits from being mostly dependent on tiny twists in fate which it is extremely easy to imagine having happened - a slight shift in MP votes in a leadership election or a sudden death that did not occur. It is a serious collection with serious tales, but some authors let a little light mischief slip into their stories as with the idea of a Tony Blair Home Secretary under Prime Minister John Smith being wheeled out to dismiss as vacuous the "Third Way" being pushed by opposition leader Michael Portillo.
Historians and others perennially debate how much influence individuals can really have on events in the face of bigger forces, and these chapters do a good attempt at making the case. In particular, the fact that Halifax almost certainly could have become Prime Minister in 1940 if he had really wanted to, but instead at a crucial meeting with Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill did not press his own case, makes for a fascinating what-if from Hugh Purcell. Even Churchill, one of the figures most likely to be put in the "big enough character to change events" category was subject to such small twists of fate.
Many of the chapters take familiar what-ifs - what if John Smith had not died suddenly, what if the Tories had won a handful fewer seats in 1992 and so on - but there are also some strikingly original ideas, including Peter Cuthbertson's story of Mrs Thatcher anticipating her demise and campaigning successfully to be succeeded by Norman Tebbit.
The subtlety with which events are initially shifted in these counter-factuals is both a strength - it makes the exercise of pondering "what if." all the more poignant and insightful - but also a weakness, at least for the non-expert reader. Unlike volumes such as President Gore...: and Other Things That Never Happened (to which I contributed a chapter on the 1832 Great Reform Act), this volume does not provide any commentary on what has been changed in the alternative histories. If you are not familiar with the details, where facts stop and fiction starts is easy to miss in many cases so whilst you enjoy reading this book, having some reference books or the internet to hand may well enhance the enjoyment.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I like alternate history and I like British political history. So the two together is enough, you'd think, to get me going.
Not so. Some of the publicity for this book has talked about the 'heavyweight contributors'. I suspect these are little more than Francis Beckett's friends. They include a convicted election fraud, Phil Woolas. Some contributors have neither academic nor political credentials.
Anyway, the essays. They are chirpily written and often entertaining if you know what really happened. And of course they vary in quality. Halifax's is controversial, clever, and historically useful. But it's one of few. Some of the essays go off on absurd tangents. The one on Healey ignores domestic policy altogether for a bizarre fantasy about Europe. Worst of all is when the authors simply make things up, utterly ignoring historical probability in favour of complete fantasy. Those on Kinnock and Butler are particular examples, ignoring great tracts of reality and fabricating situations, people and entire ideologies without the remotest acknowledgement of what would probably have happened. There are also glaring omissions. Lord Curzon, Roy Jenkins and Michael Heseltine are nowhere to be seen, even though they came achingly close to the premiership. These are glaring omissions. They are too good to lose. The book, in short, is not worth buying, though nice for a browse.
Not so. Some of the publicity for this book has talked about the 'heavyweight contributors'. I suspect these are little more than Francis Beckett's friends. They include a convicted election fraud, Phil Woolas. Some contributors have neither academic nor political credentials.
Anyway, the essays. They are chirpily written and often entertaining if you know what really happened. And of course they vary in quality. Halifax's is controversial, clever, and historically useful. But it's one of few. Some of the essays go off on absurd tangents. The one on Healey ignores domestic policy altogether for a bizarre fantasy about Europe. Worst of all is when the authors simply make things up, utterly ignoring historical probability in favour of complete fantasy. Those on Kinnock and Butler are particular examples, ignoring great tracts of reality and fabricating situations, people and entire ideologies without the remotest acknowledgement of what would probably have happened. There are also glaring omissions. Lord Curzon, Roy Jenkins and Michael Heseltine are nowhere to be seen, even though they came achingly close to the premiership. These are glaring omissions. They are too good to lose. The book, in short, is not worth buying, though nice for a browse.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A quite interesting collection of ideas of what might have been, particularly regarding Herbert Morrison and Rab Butler. Unfortunately, this group of Prime Ministers seem absurdly unrealistic in what they supposedly would have done. For example, the claim that Michael Foot, had he become Prime Minister instead of James Callaghan, would have solved the economic recession of the 1970s is ludicrously optimistic. The reason for this seems to be that each essay has been written by a determinedly partisan author, rather than an objective historian or political commentator.
Worth a read from the library, but I would not be happy to have purchased this.
Worth a read from the library, but I would not be happy to have purchased this.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
magazine article at best
it was a mildly interesting read with not a lot of facts - it was quite fast paced and was overly obsequious and deliberatively sycophantic in the case of most of the Labour... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Bolaji Laurance
An Entertaining Read, For The Well-Informed
A series of alternative history essays on the Prime Ministers we nearly had could have been a dull affair, but the varying styles and stories played out in the essays kept my... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Jae Kay
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
