The Spanish Armada is today regarded with faint embarrassment. In Spain, it is often limited to a little more than a footnote about a somewhat foolhardy endeavour, whilst in Britain, its defeat has gone from being a sign of divine salvation to a serious threat saved by a combination of luck and weather. Had it been successful, there is little doubt that it would have posed a genuine threat to Elizabeth I – with the ill-prepared English army having little chance of success against a vast Sp...

A NEW NOVELLA FROM THE TEAM BEHIND 'AGENT LAVENDER'At time of writing, Britain has been led by thirteen men and two women since the Second World War. But not all countries have this kind of turnover - some, like Italy, have had dozens of leaders.But others still have seen sustained periods of democratic governance by a single individual. What if Britain, a country in which a decade in office is seen as a long spell, had a post-war Prime Minister who found himself able to go...

Harold Wilson dominated British politics for almost two decades. His political skill saw him make powerful enemies and bitter rivals, both inside the Labour Party and out. Conspiracy theorists, some in very high places, even circulated rumours that he was an agent of the Soviet Union. In reality, of course, there was not a shred of truth to these malicious claims.But what if there had been?In Agent Lavender, Harold Wilson flees Whitehall in the dead of night, with MI5 and t...

"Welcome to the BBC's coverage of the 2015 UK Presidential Election…"In President Ashdown Is Retiring, the authors of Shuffling the Deck team up once again to explore the aftermath of a thoroughly modern and fundamentally Blairite republican revolution.Now, join David Dimbleby and many familiar faces on Election Night 2015, including Business Secretary Peter Mandelson MP, Green Party Lord Senator Robert Llewellyn, a blonde-haired eccentric Mayor of London,...

In the spring of 1917, Vladimir Lenin was taken from his exile in Switzerland, loaded onto a sealed train, and taken to the Russian capital of Petrograd – a city where all manner of revolutionary ideas were in the air. Sent by the German government to add his radical voice to the chaos of the post-Tsarist regime, few would have expected that Lenin would soon preside over the establishment of the world's first communist state and inexorably change the course of human history.But wha...

What if Remain had won in 2016? What if Britain had never joined the EEC? What if groups other than Europe had decided to unite?In this EU-themed collection from Sea Lion Press and edited by Tom Black (Agent Lavender, Shuffling the Deck, Zonen), you will find some worlds very like our own, and others very dissimilar indeed. Questions as simple as “what if Maastricht failed?” are posed, along scenarios as complex as an ideologically-reversed Cold War or a federalised Britis...

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 s...

Yorkshire, whether you think of it as 'God's Own County', or an uppity region with a Pennine-sized chip on its shoulder, is nevertheless a place with a firm identity, which for many years has clamoured for more autonomy of its own. In the early-2000s, it was one of three regions in the North of England that was mooted for devolution, but a failed referendum in the North-East, coupled with an increasingly ambivalent Westminster, scuppered proposals before they began. Over a decade later, no...

Harold Wilson dominated British politics for almost two decades. His political skill saw him make powerful enemies and bitter rivals, both inside the Labour Party and out. Conspiracy theorists, some in very high places, even circulated rumours that he was an agent of the Soviet Union. In reality, of course, there was not a shred of truth to these malicious claims. But what if there had been? In Agent Lavender, Harold Wilson flees Whitehall in the dead of night, with MI5 and...

Allowing you to uncover the woman behind the 'Iron Lady' image, 'Iron Lady: The Thatcher Years' takes a thorough yet lighthearted look at the life and times of Britain's longest-serving twentieth-century prime minister. As both the first woman to become leader of a European country and the first British premier to achieve re-election for three consecutive terms, Margaret Thatcher's legacy is such that even today she plays a significant role in British political life. Reflecting on her life...

Margaret Thatcher enthrals whenever she speaks. Her political career has spanned five decades and her influence on world politics is undeniable. From followers she inspires devotion; from detractors she induces unprecedented venom - but they listen all the same. Margaret Thatcher is the most quoted British political leader since Winston Churchill and in this unique collection Iain Dale and Grant Tucker have picked out her most memorable remarks. Never far from emitting a scathing rebuke sh...

After Margaret Thatcher, Edwina Currie was the second most prominent woman in British politics during the 1980s. Indeed, she was often spoken of as a potential Prime Minister. Her outspokenness and her lively, media-friendly personality won her a much higher profile than her status as a junior minister would otherwise have commanded. When she was forced to resign from the government after warning of the danger signs of salmonella infection in eggs, she was already a national figure. Reveal...