Recent content by Alexander Rooksmoor

I think I was unhappy that amateurs felt so entitled that they could simply come along and insist that the book should never have been written because of some online forum they had participated in. I am sceptical of such 'proof'. It may be my age but I seek something more substantial than simple...

David Flin: If writing for a mainstream audience, one has to write something that will strike a chord with that mainstream audience. I can write about Edwardian life till I am blue in the face, but Bloody Downton Abbey is what the mainstream audience consumes because that's what it understands...

I think on that anti-triumphalist line Deighton was walking the same path that Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo were emphasising right from the title of It Happened Here (1964). Even when I was a boy/young ma there remained a sense that Britain would never have collaborated and would never have...

Yes, when I was a History teacher/lecturer in the 1990s I remember an academic who taught German history telling me that even for factual books publishers advised that putting a swastika on the front cover would boost sales 10%.

Wolfram: I think another part of the problem is that, well, there's a reason Nazi victories are so popular, isn't there? A lot of people want to read them. Part of that is that people want to read AH about stuff they already more or less know about, or think they do, part of it is that people...

I totally agree with this. In Thinking of Writing Alternate History? I similarly portrayed alternate history less as a genre in its own right and more as a framing genre and, like you, pointed to AH thrillers, AH spy stories, AH romances, AH horror, AH slice of life stories, even AH erotica. All...

I found this very interesting. In my Thinking of Writing Alternate History? I tried to grapple with some of these questions. In particular around novels that perceived a victory for Nazi Germany that were published before the end of the Second World War. The classic is Swastika Night published...

Yes, it was just the kind of thing I was hoping for when I made some suggestions. I had a great deal of fun with that novel especially the incidental changes like certain English towns not growing as they did in our world, because Alfred was not around to develop them as burghs and how the...

Stepping away from anthologies, I am very interested, having done a short story and an essay on this kind of scenario to read Bob Mumby's Chasing Shadows. Given developments in the USA in recent years, discussions of potential coups d'etat in the USA has probably reached a new level of interest...

I think it would be interesting to try, given the Chinese law in 2011 banning portraying alternate histories or even time travel as 'disrespectful to history'. Such an anthology might attract some protests or some cyber attacks! I have thought up a few scenarios from having taught some Chinese...

I think it would be a good idea. Self-publishing I have done pretty well out of this kind of book. I have done two for Britain, two for the USA, one for France and one for Germany. I had thought of one for Mediterranean countries, rather than Spain, Italy or Greece independently and ones from...

In addition to welcoming additional publicity for Streseland, I like the fact that Sea Lion now has such a catalogue of books that there are sufficient to populate a flow chart. This is surely a milestone to be proud of.

One thing I always note about the invasion of Poland in 1939 is that while it was a short campaign, it did not employ tactics that would be later be described as Blitzkrieg. The German advance was little different to the kind of approach used in 1914. The Blitzkrieg would not be employed until...

This kind of thing led me to wonder if it came down to the attitude of individual contributors, if, for example, they had a book outlining their views better than in the programme. I know the BBC has tended to move away from deleting recordings, but they can come out erratically. It took ages...