Prime Minister Portillo

[ljofa]

I managed to buy a copy of this from Amazon when I was looking at "President Gore... and other things that never happened: A Second Collection of Political Counterfactuals" (which I subsequently ordered).

Interesting collection of British 20th Century political WI's with the exception of "WI Lenin never made it to the Finland Station". There are several about the status of Liberal Party throughout the past 100 years and interestingly enough, only one about WW2. None of the essays have any status of Briti-wank, they are a serious set of discussions which are fairly plausible and non-fantastic.

However, like many other WI essay collections, several of the TL's aren't really TL's - they're a 20 page discussion of Britain at the time and then a half page discussion of how things could have been different which really detracts from the essay.

Overall I'd recommend buying it if you're interested in British politics. Otherwise you might want to see "President Gore".

[Electric Monk]

Yeah… Those are sitting on my Amazon wishlist. I want them both a great deal, actually but am fairly broke at the moment.

In addition to those two there is also (by a different author) a New Zealand book and an Australian one along the same type of political/historical counterfactuals.

New Zealand As It Might Have Been
What If? : Australian History as It Might Have Been


From the excerpts I've read a couple of the New Zealand ones ignore the fundamental facts of economics (it would be a long aside, and you'd have to interested in New Zealand political/economic history) but otherwise both look like a good read.