Is there any point to ‘What If’ history, or is it just an amusing parlour game? Prize-winning historian Andrew Roberts believes that counterfactual history – the study of what did not happen – can be invaluable in the writing of real history. We can all point to moments in our own lives where sheer luck propelled us on paths we had never planned. The same, Roberts argues, is true of nations.
Andrew Roberts took a first class honours degree in Modern History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he is an honorary senior scholar. His biography of Neville Chamberlain’s and Winston Churchill’s foreign secretary, the Earl of Halifax, entitled The Holy Fox was published in 1991, to be followed by the controversial, but no less well-received Eminent Churchillians in 1994. As well as appearing regularly on British television and radio, Roberts writes book reviews for The Sunday Telegraph as well as The Spectator, Literary Review, Mail on Sunday and Daily Telegraph. He is perhaps best known to North American audiences for his NBC broadcast of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, and his CNN broadcasts of the funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Roberts’ most recent book, Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership (2003) coincided with his four-part BBC2 history series on the same theme.
Due for release in early April 2004, he has edited (with an Introduction) ‘What Might Have Been’, a collection of twelve ‘What If?’ essays written by distinguished historians, including Antonia Fraser, Norman Stone, Amanda Foreman, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Conrad Black and Anne Somerset.
Roberts holds an honorary doctorate from Westminster College, Missouri and resides in Knightsbridge, London.
