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:
“Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)
“I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)