I did read a lot of Reviews of this book, these have enriched me immensely, I have read brilliant arguments about Britain during the ‘what if’ scenario and comparisons to Britain now,in the present age. And various characters have an unfortunate tendency to info-dump the politics of the setting at each other, in 'as-you-know-my-friend' kind of way. Given that we have full access to every passing thought from every viewpoint character, and given that Frank spends most of his time worrying that he'll give the Big Secret away, it feels pretty artificial that we're not told what it is. The big historical sweeps seem credible guesses: the newspaper tycoon Lord Beaverbrook – an isolationist, pro-German equivalent to Roth's President Lindbergh – is prime minister, with the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley as home secretary, while Churchill is the leader of an underground resistance movement that occasionally daubs V signs in public places.

The strangest and most problematic part of the book is an appendix titled “Historical Notes” which come across as a pure polemic; in which the author lays out his own modern political beliefs in regard to current issues – primarily Scottish Independence, “Far larger, and more dangerous, is the threat to all of Britain posed by the Scottish National Party, which now sits in power in the devolved government in Edinburgh.So the narrative viewpoint is split between the evil baddie Nazi Gestapo commander who is sent to the UK to capture a British scientist with a military secret, a decent British chap who is spying for the Resistance, decent chap's insipid wife, and the scientist with undiagnosed Aspergers and a long-winded boarding school backstory. Beaverbrook, in real history, was a close friend of Churchill and an effective minister in his wartime cabinet.

I don't want to give too much away from this point on because this is where we start to get the twists and turns I'm used to from Sansom's books and the reason I adore his works so much.A few things have changed, of course: the Jewish-owned Lyons Corner Houses are now British Corner Houses, and right-wing politicians such as Mosley and Powell are in the ascendant, though other latterly-famous names such as Butler and Douglas-Home nonetheless have senior positions in the post-treaty government.

In Germany Hitler is suffering from advanced stages of Parkinson’s, a power struggle is about to ensue. It should have been somewhere i the 60s, but in the book, he died in December 1952 which seems to me a bit early. Why on earth would the Germans have erected tariff barriers against British produce when such produce, particularly in armaments, would have been vital for the continuing campaign in the east? Having sprung their man from a mental institution in Birmingham, made their way through the hands of several different cells as they travel down to the south coast, the resistance man sheltering them in Brighton says to one of the group, "I hear he was in a mental institution".The story starts, however, in Winston Churchill's perspective, and after five o'clock he makes a decision that changes history and sets up the start of the alternate universe - he declines the opportunity to be prime minister. The second world war is such a pivotal event in human history that affected generations have inevitably speculated about what might have happened had the momentum swung slightly another way. Everything is under supreme control, with the likes of the press, radio and tv, streets are patrolled by violent police, and all this and ever greater constraints the British will have to endure. One SS man asks another one, what will happen to the British jews after they'd been rounded up, and the answer is "They'll be sent to the Isle of Wight, then sent out east. Following the tragic death of their child, his wife thinks he is having an affair, but when she finds out his real role, and is questioned by the authorities, she is drawn in to the activities of the resistance reluctantly.

Birmingemo psichiatrinę ligoninę patenka mokslininkas Frankas Muncasteris iš savo brolio, dirbančio amerikiečiams nugirdęs kai ką, kas labai praverstų vokiečiams. Conversations glancingly reveal that what we know as the London and Helsinki Olympics of 1948 and 1952 took place in quite different countries because of the alterations in the geo-political situation. Indeed his greatest opprobrium is reserved for the Scottish Nationalist Party and, rather bizarrely, the very last pages of his postscript reveal that the main purpose of the novel seems to be to weigh into the current debate on Scottish Independence. Rather it has a didactic purpose, namely to warn you against the dangers of nationalism and fascism in the real historical present by showing you nationalism and fascism in a fictitious historical past.

The twist with Geoff is incredible and I went from shocked to gutted to shocked to gutted in the space of a few chapters of his story, all told from other characters' points of view.