What Might Have Been?: Imaginary History from Twelve Leading Historians [Hardcover]

'Stimulating, provocative and playful, WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, is everything on looks for in a collection of essays.' (Graham Stewart LITERARY REVIEW )

'a gifted team of authors evnisages alternative historical scenarios. As has become the custome of the genre, some of the contributors submit sober and measured assessments, while others spot a chance for playfulness.' (Blair Worden SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

'Roberts himself contributes both the best essay in the collection.... and an affable, perceptive introduction which he deploys to muse on the nature of such virtual historical projections.' (Roger Hutchinson THE SCOTSMAN )

'Andrew Roberts has recruited a dozen historians to pose, and answer, some of these What If, and some of their answers are as good as the questions.' (Nichola Harman THE SPECTATOR )

'All twelve essasy are good fun, and they will make the reader think - and that is, after all, what all good history, 'factual' or 'counterfactual', should be about (TG Otte TLS )

'The role that chance can play (in history) is well worth reasserting, and it is done here with much vigour and expertise.' (Philip Ziegler DAILY TELEGRAPH )

'this intriguing and entertaining anthology.' (Andrew Holgate THE SUNDAY TIMES )

'Buy the book and read it for fun.' (Roy Hattersley THE OBSERVER )

'many of the essays are amusing.' (Tristram Hunt NEW STATESMAN )

'WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN is a highly enjoyable read.' (Andrew Lynch SUNDAY BUSINESS POST )

'Counterfactual history, when deployed as expertly as it is herre, reminds us that what seems inevitable is actually often a matter of chance.' (Kathryn Hughes THE MAIL ON SUNDAY )

'this intriguing and entertaining anthology.'

'Buy the book and read it for fun.'

'many of the essays are amusing.'

'WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN is a highly enjoyable read.'

'a gifted team of authors evnisages alternative historical scenarios. As has become the custome of the genre, some of the contributors submit sober and measured assessments, while others spot a chance for playfulness.'

'Roberts himself contributes both the best essay in the collection.... and an affable, perceptive introduction which he deploys to muse on the nature of such virtual historical projections.'

'Andrew Roberts has recruited a dozen historians to pose, and answer, some of these What If, and some of their answers are as good as the questions.'

'All twelve essasy are good fun, and they will make the reader think - and that is, after all, what all good history, 'factual' or 'counterfactual', should be about

'The role that chance can play (in history) is well worth reasserting, and it is done here with much vigour and expertise.'

Throughout history, great and terrible events have often hinged upon luck. Tiny changes can produce profoundly different results. We all ask 'what might have been?' about our own lives, now award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has asked a team of 12 leading historians and biographers 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 (Gunpowder Plot), Norman Stone (Sarajevo 1914) and Anne Somerset (the Spanish Armada) consider: 'What if ...?' Robert Cowley demonstrates how nearly Britain won the American war of independence. In her first publication since her acclaimed GEORGIANA, Amanda Foreman muses on Lincoln's Northern States of America and Lord Palmerston's Great Britain going to war, as they so nearly did in 1861. Whether it's Stalin fleeing Moscow in 1941(Simon Sebag Montefiore), or Napoleon not being forced to retreat from it in 1812 (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 12 essays are thought-provoking and scholarly. Here is a fascinating and often horrifying parallel universe - a universe that so easily might have been.

Andrew Roberts, 40, might not have got into Cambridge if the head of history at Caius College had not been amused by why he was chucked out of school. His books would not have been written if Roberts had been even half-way competent at his initial career choice, merchant banking. So he would not have won the Wolfson and James Stern Silver Pen prizes, nor would have become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. More troubling to him still, if he had not sat next to the biographer Leonie Frieda in the Poissonerie restaurant in Sloane Avenue, she might not be his girlfriend today.