Chains of Consequences: How Princess Diana’s Great-Great-Grandfather Created Grand Theft Auto
By Tom Anderson The eyes of the world were turned to Paris on August 31st, 1997, when Diana, Princess of Wales died from injuries...
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Feb 3, 202012 min read
Naval Gazing 12: Cold Warriors
By Tom Anderson As the Second World War ended, the Cold War began. The Soviet Union and the Western Allies had always been uneasy...
Jan 27, 20207 min read
Chains of Consequence - Jazz, Charlie Brown, and Maths: The Strange Origins of ‘Google’
By Tom Anderson THE sun is setting— Can’t you hear A something in the distance Howl!!? I wonder if it’s— Yes!! it is That horrid Google...
Jan 20, 20207 min read
Consequences: A Jumbo Article
By Tom Anderson In May 2016, a child climbed into a zoo enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden and was grabbed and dragged...
Jan 14, 20208 min read
Consequences: Profundity, Mistranslation and Crystallised Phrases
By Tom Anderson Some years ago, when I was in the final stages of writing up my PhD thesis, I decided I needed a suitably...
Jan 7, 202012 min read
Naval Gazing 11: The Ill-Named Pacific War
By Tom Anderson The name ‘Pacific’ Ocean means ‘Peaceful’; it was so named by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 because he found favourable...
Dec 31, 20198 min read
Consequences: Calendar Club and Happy New Year
By Tom Anderson “Did you hear about the man who stole a calendar? He got twelve months.” – old Christmas cracker joke Since the dawn of...
Dec 24, 201910 min read
Consequences: The Royal Family and a Very British Christmas
By Tom Anderson Christmas is a festival which has reached around the world, and given birth to a host of different traditions in...
Dec 17, 201912 min read
Naval Gazing Part 10 – World War 2: Electric Boogaloo
By Tom Anderson World War II has, for understandable reasons, left a long shadow on our cultural memory. Not only the greatest war the...
Dec 10, 201910 min read
Consequences in Alternate History: How an Egyptian Policeman’s Bullet Created a British Icon
By Tom Anderson In my previous ‘Consequences’ article, I described how the near miss of a gunman led to the writing of The Wind in the...
Dec 3, 201910 min read
Naval Gazing, Part 9: Interwar Intrigues
By Tom Anderson World War One was said to be ‘the war to end all wars’. The fact that we now have to append a number to it is testament...
Nov 26, 20197 min read
Consequences in Alternate History: Across the Wild Wood
By Tom Anderson How a Scotsman’s Alcoholism and an Englishman’s Bad Aim Created Modern Children’s Literature Kenneth Grahame was, as one...
Nov 19, 201911 min read
Alternate Terminology: Naval Gazing, Part 8 - The Not-So-Great War
By Tom Anderson On June 28th 1914, Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the...
Nov 17, 20198 min read
An Introduction to the “Look to the West” Series
By Tom Anderson In January 2007 I first began writing and posting a project I called “Look to the West”, my first ‘proper’ attempt at a...
Nov 12, 20197 min read
Consequences in Alternate History: The Garibaldi Problem
By Tom Anderson I recently mentioned on social media that on this day (then November 4th) Túpac Amaru II had launched his uprising in...
Nov 5, 20198 min read
Naval Gazing Part 7: We’re All Sunk By A Battle Submarine
By Tom Anderson The last few articles in this series have mostly focused on the idea of a neat progression of frontline naval technology...
Oct 29, 201911 min read
Consequences in AH: How the Scottish Liberal Democrats caused Brexit
By Tom Anderson When dramatic political events take place, it is common for analysts to speculate on just what sowed the seeds for them....
Oct 22, 201910 min read
Alternate Terminologies: Naval Gazing Part 6- DREADNOUGHT!
By Tom Anderson As discussed in the previous article in this series, the second half of the 19th century saw rapid advancement in naval...
Oct 15, 20196 min read
Chains of Consequences: How the Daily Mirror Created the iPhone (and Saved the Lenin Museum)
By Tom Anderson The Daily Mirror is a British tabloid newspaper with a generally left-wing and pro-Labour Party editorial position, which...
Oct 8, 201911 min read
Alternate Terminology – Naval Gazing Part 5: Steam and Steel
By Tom Anderson Although the details had changed, much of the basic principles of naval warfare had remained quite static for centuries...
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