Prime Minister Portillo: and Other Things That Never Happened

by Duncan Brack (Editor), Duncan Brack (Editor), Iain Dale (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.40

  The grand passage of political history is steered by a combination of events great and small, assessing how matters might have turned out under different circumstances is one of the most intriguing - and entertaining - historical exercises. What if Lenin's train had crashed on the way to the Finland Station? If Lee Harvey Oswald had missed, would JFK have become one of the greatest US Presidents, or one of the worst? What if John Smith had not died suddenly in 1994? In this book a collection of distinguished commentators consider how things might have been otherwise. Among them are Sir Bernard Ingham, who ponders the consequences of Margaret Thatcher's resignation over the Westland crisis; John Charmley, who asks, 'What if Lord Halifax had become Prime Minister in 1940 instead of Churchill?'; and Anne Perkins, who wonders how the history of the Labour Party would have unfolded had Aneurin Bevan outlived Hugh Gaitskell. Diverting and thought-provoking as they can be, counterfactuals also have a serious historical purpose, for close examination of what did not happen serves to test interpretations of what actually did happen, and provides a prism through which the great events can be viewed. It is not only Michael Portillo who is left to ponder what might have been ...