By Gary Oswald.In 1154, Nicholas Breakspear became Pope Adrian IV and ruler of the Papal States. He was the first, and so far only, Pope from England, being born in Hertfordshire. Adrian’s time as Pop...

By Gary Oswald.In 1013 Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark and Norway, invaded England after having raided the country regularly for the last decade. England was considerably richer than Denmark or Norwa...

By Gary Oswald.Ireland prior to 800 AD was almost entirely rural. There were settlements but these were normally either ringforts where in a clan would find shelter during wars or monasteries and reli...

By Gary Oswald.Portugal arrived in East Africa (modern day Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and Somalia) in 1496 as part of their larger plan to take control of the Indian Ocean and so the spice trade. The...

By Gary Oswald.Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire but nor it was ever entirely cut off from interaction with that Empire. After all, from 43 AD to 410 AD, Rome ruled England, Wales and parts o...

By Gary Oswald.In March 2026 Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing political party Reform UK, held a series of rallies in Eastern England, visiting Ipswich and Sunderland to lend support to his party...

By Gary Oswald.If there is one thing that has defined the geopolitical situation of the British Isles over the last 500 years, it is the fact that they have a moat. The nature of British warfare has b...

By Gary Oswald.As discussed in the previous article, the British armies in South Africa were firmly in the ascendancy during 1900. But as they advanced into the Boer Republics, capturing their capital...

By Gary Oswald.In a previous article, I discussed how National Leagues for Association Football emerged in England, Scotland, Ireland and other European countries in the late 19th century. And as soon...

By Gary Oswald.In October of 1899, after a long crisis, the two Boer states of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic declared war on the British Empire and sent their armies to invade Briti...

By Gary Oswald.T.L. Morganfield is an American writer of Aztec themed alternate history, fantasy, and AH romance. Her short story Night Bird Soaring was a finalist for the 2009 Sidewise Awards.Hello a...

By Gary Oswald.Meljean Brooks’ The Iron Duke, the first book in the popular Iron Seas series, follows Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth as she investigates a dead body found in the Isle of Dogs, on t...

By Gary Oswald.William Ewart Gladstone, four-time Prime Minister of the UK, was an imperialist. He oversaw the largest empire to ever exist and that empire expanded during his time in charge. In parti...

By Gary Oswald.On the 30th of May 1999 in Wembley Stadium, one of the most important moments in British sport happened. It was the 94th minute of a 90-minute Association Football game, with the score ...

By Gary Oswald.Toy Story 2 was the third feature film made by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, a sequel to their first film Toy Story. It was an even bigger commercial and critical hi...

By Gary Oswald.Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is the editor of the What Ifs of Jewish History AH book and owner of the Counterfactual History Review, a blog that has been running for twelve years and covers the...

By Gary Oswald.Literary genres are a funny thing. On the one hand they are essentially advertising, 'did you like this book? Well, it's a fantasy book and here are 200 more fantasy books, you'll like ...

By Gary Oswald.If you spend any time at all online looking for people talking about the British Empire (and honestly if you're reading this, you probably do), you'll have heard about Operation Legacy ...

By Gary Oswald.Being enthusiasts of alternate history, everyone reading this is probably able to name an iconic piece of AH fiction in most formats. A book, a comic, a tv show, a video game etc. But i...

By Gary Oswald.Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 Quentin Tarantino war film about allied agents operating in occupied France during 1944. Those agents are planning an assassination of Adolf Hitler and, t...

By Gary Oswald.The exact effect the smallpox epidemics had on the native populations of the New World is a deeply contentious historical argument. This is because there are no agreed upon population c...

By Gary Oswald.Rugby Union, like a lot of sports, was first codified in the UK and as such the four home nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland) have traditionally been the heartland of the gam...

By Gary Oswald.So, as I think is probably clear by my contributions to this blog, I find Alternate History interesting. I find the idea of making changes to the past and seeing what results from that ...

By Gary Oswald.Portuguese Mozambique officially began in 1496 when Vasco de Gama arrived in Maputo Bay and didn't end until 1975. But in reality Mozambique is a big country and for most of that time, ...

By Gary Oswald.The Kingdom of Kongo was one of the largest and most powerful pre-colonial states in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its capital was in modern Angola and it dominated the mouth of the Congo river f...

By Gary Oswald.This is the eighth article in the Caribbean Cold War series and in the previous seven, Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator, has been a prominent figure as an inspiration and a warning, som...

By Gary Oswald.Few fandoms have embraced the ‘what if’ scenario to the extent of professional wrestling fans. If, for instance, you search on YouTube for “what if pro wrestling” you will find not only...

By Gary Oswald.From December 2022 to January 2026, the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin has been running an exhibition called ‘Roads not Taken, Oder: es hatte auch anders kommen konnen’ which c...

By Gary Oswald.Association football, better known as either football or soccer depending on your nationality and class, is the world's most popular team sport. It is, alongside American, Arena, Austra...

Aaron Burr is not the most famous of the first generation of statesmen in the USA, but he is one of the most intriguing. The bare bones of his life story bear that out. He was a soldier during the Rev...

By Gary Oswald.The history of most of the formerly British-ruled Caribbean islands are, in broad strokes, largely similar. They were conquered by Europeans in the 17th century, with their indigenous p...

By Gary Oswald.The appeal of alternate history is that it pokes at the certainties in our world. The theme, the message, of a lot of AH is “do not take for granted the world we live in”. A lot of what...

Review by Gary OswaldMurder on the Titania is a collection of five short stories all starring the same protagonist, a swashbuckling bisexual 19th century female pirate called Marta Ramos who robs airs...

By Gary Oswald.The Adal Sultanate was a Muslim Somali Sultanate based around modern Somalia and the Ogaden or Somali region of modern-day Ethiopia. It is normally considered to have existed from 1415 ...

Review by Gary Oswald.Quantum Leap has a lot to answer for. The 1989 TV series had its protagonist inhabit the bodies of various figures in history and solve their problems for them. This inspired the...

By Gary Oswald.This is the sixth article in this series and the previous five have all been about how the Cuban Revolution and the rise of Fidel Castro as Cuba's military dictator effected the other n...

By Gary OswaldAs discussed in a previous article, the British Empire in 1807 abolished the slave trade and stopped importing slaves to its colonies. However, it did not free any of its existing slaves...