Some British Might-Have-Beens

Abstract

One of the more notable trends of 1980 has been the sudden emergence of a new genre, history-by-hindsight. The Hollywood version of this is to be found in films such as The Final Countdown (where the Americans refight Pearl Harbor with the help of a nuclear aircraft-carrier). The literary version is represented by books such as John Grigg’s 1943 (how we won the war by launching D-Day a year early) or Hugh Thomas’s colossus of wishful thinking, An Unfinished History of the World. Professor Thomas has probably secured a lasting place for this work by his remarkable refusal of the £7000 Arts Council prize awarded to him, on the grounds that he did not hold with state patronage of the arts.

First published in New Society, 3 July 1980.