In Fiction
In the alternative reality depicted in John Wyndham's short story Random Quest, where the Second World War did not happen, Rab Butler is the prime minister. The story was written in 1954, when the latter was a serious possibility.
Butler also becomes World War II prime minister in the 2007 alternative history novel Resistance by Owen Sheers. However, he leads a collaborationist puppet government after Germany has largely conquered the British Isles.
Similarly, Butler, along with Lord Halifax, engineers a June 1940 British surrender to Germany (and ultimate occupation) in the background to the alternate history novel The Big One, ultimately leading to his assassination by resistance forces.
In the alternate history novel Dominion by C. J. Sansom, World War II ended in June 1940 when the British government, under the leadership of the Prime Minister Lord Halifax, signed a peace treaty with Nazi Germany in Berlin. In November 1952, Butler was serving as Foreign Secretary in the cabinet of Lord Beaverbrook.
Read more about this topic: Rab Butler
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us to break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)