Book review: ‘More What if’ by Robert Cowley

More What If? Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been by Robert Cowley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Now then.

It appears I was ‘a bit previous’ in my review of the first ‘What If’ volume of alternative historical possibilities, giving it 4 rather than 5 stars for, among other reasons, lack of my favourite ‘what-if’ of all history. I find the sequel has, as its first line of back page blurb,

“What if, on 14th October 1066, William the Conqueror had lost the Battle of Hastings?”

No spoilers here, but a ‘fun fact’ – which I hadn’t known until my research, during the writing of ‘The Evening Lands‘, on the Battle of Fulford (the first of the three 1066 battles, and which happened just down the road from where I live) – is that Harold Godwinson owed his religious allegiance to Constantinople – not Rome. The England invaded by William was, technically, an Orthodox Christian country, and part of a sweep of civilisation extending not just through Viking Scandinavia (“As every schoolkid knows”) but also as far east as Kyiv and Novgorod – the latter at that time building an intelligent effort to “Seek a prince who may rule over us and judge us according to law.” What might have happened if that sweep of Northern civilisation, rather than the Rome-based one of southern Europe, had held sway over the Middle Ages?

Uh, so, right – this is a book review not a soap-box. To horse!

A wider range of ‘What if’s are covered here, not just the military. The effect upon Western philosophy of Socrates dying in battle (yes, he had to do National Service); Pilate sparing Jesus (so no crosses on necklaces); Ming Dynasty Chinese navigator Zheng He making it all the way round the Cape of Good Hope in his giant ships instead of being called back home…

‘More What If’ lacks the short-and-sweet inter-chapter essays of the first volume, jewels which included some of the most extreme, rapid, and breathtaking turning points. But it lives up to its name even better than the first volume in that there is a little less concentration on the minutiae of battle and more on the speculation of the wider results.

Like the first ‘What If’ it is quite information-dense – worth a pause after reading each chapter especially if, like me, you’re not an historian. Both books are also a pretty good way of understanding what actually did happen on all the world-turning occasions they describe.

So it’s getting more stars than volume 1 – and not just because of Hastings.





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