Shuffling The Deck: Britain's Prime Ministers, but not as you know them

by Jack Tindale, Tom Black

They're Prime Ministers. But not as we know them.

Once called 'the most intellectual parlour game around', alternate history doesn't have to be about Nazi zeppelins and steampunk empires. In this dry and witty re-imagining of post-war British politics, the authors take turns to place a familiar Prime Minister in an unfamiliar environment. James Callaghan, the darling of post-war prosperity and Britain's first 'television PM'? Anthony Eden, the hero who won the Second World War? To say nothing of the place in the history books held by Margaret Thatcher...

A self-styled 'bit of fun', Shuffling The Deck is nevertheless a must-read for alternate historians interested in whether circumstance is more important than 'great man theory' would have us believe.

Reviews

Genres: Alternate History

89 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 24, 2015

Reviews

[Tom Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intentionally described by the authors as a 'bit of fun' (i.e. not the most rigorous of AH works), but also a thought-provoking one. Black and Tindale posit the idea of a world where Britain has the same list of Prime Ministers as in real history (our timeline) but in a different order, and seen in a very different way. What if Alec Douglas-Home had been a young and vigorous leader in the 1940s, or Tony Blair an elder statesman in the 2010s? How would the facts 'everyone knows' about their characters be different if they had had different opportunities?

There are a number of imaginative touches at fleshing out this world, such as hints of different television programmes and the background running joke that America's presidents are also reordered. Well recommended for those interested in British political history who want to see familiar figures in a different light.

[Derek Alberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if Britain had had the same list of Prime Ministers - but in a different order and for different periods of time? How might we see them differently? From Margaret Thatcher and Clement Attlee, obscure footnotes of history, to John Major, charismatic but dodgy shyster, many interesting variations on history are explored. Some figures get a better deal than in real history, like Alec Douglas-Home and Gordon Brown, while others are stuck with a bad situation and remembered worse than in real history as a result, like Harold Macmillan. The authors throw in many tongue-in-cheek ironies and background nods. Not the most serious of AH, but as with their other work "Agent Lavender", an excellent read for those interested in UK political history.