“The funny thing about homecomings is the momentary sense of being simultaneously in two different time streams. There’s the knowledge of everything said and done while away. There’s the feeling of having never been away…”
Returning from the USA with an apparently innocuous case full of miscellaneous notes and records, renown historian and Churchill biographer Anthony Markham is oblivious about the ordeal that will soon befall him. The year is 1959, but Eisenhower is nowhere in sight. Harry Anslinger is president. Gandhi did not survive his most fatal hunger strike, Hitler and Churchill died prematurely, Goring controls Germany, World War 2 never happened and the Nazis have made peace with the Jews. Within this alternate timeline, Markham is on the constant run from a cloak-and-dagger conspiracy intent on capturing him and the mysterious case he is compelled to defend. But why is Markham at the centre of this conspiracy? What were the ‘Pressburg Accords’ and who is so desperate to get hold of them? And what do Enoch Powell, Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand, Vicky Richardson, Harold Macmillan, Michael Foot, the British media, the Soviet Russia and the Indian National Party have to do with it all?
This short thriller by British libertarian luminary Sean Gabb is a recommended read for two reasons: the fast-paced espionage adventure that makes up the story, keeping the reader guessing at every turn, and the alternate future (or alternate past) that frames it. While this reviewer is at a loss for accurate comparisons as far as the mystery/thriller genre goes, The Churchill Memorandum is a gripping, suspenseful and rewarding adventure nested in a bemusingly alternative Albion that never was.
C Hill
Last Exit to Albion 