« Won't Get Fooled Again » James Philip

It is February 1968 in a world in which the swinging sixties never happened because the Cuban Missiles Crisis of October 1962 went catastrophically wrong. Since the cataclysm struck, obliterating great and historic cities, laying waste to great swathes of the northern hemisphere, the threat of new wars has never been far away.

There has been no post–war settlement, no washing of the spears. In the United States a President beset by crises at home and overseas, is ruthlessly intent on clinging to power to power; and it is election year. The Russians and the Americans have determined that the price of peace in Europe is to be paid by the victims of their war over Cuba.

The Queen of England is planning to tour the countries of the Australasian, Indian and African Commonwealth. But in a world in which mendacity rules the political stage, in which the leaders of the free and the communist world alike are at loggerheads, and in which the long–term reverberations of the October War and its resulting aftershocks, conflicts large and small, are still playing out, there is still plenty of room for heroes, unlikely villains and desperate players who have nothing to lose, to change the course of the history of the brave new, post–apocalyptic epoch.

In the midst of it all most of the survivors just want to get on with their lives. To seek that most elusive of providence’s gifts…normality.

So, while Presidents, Admirals and Generals, Prime Ministers, strategists and warriors, ministers great and misguided, struggle to find sense in the chaos, the fate of nations hangs in the balance. And yet, in spite of the swirling tides of war and peace; there is time enough for love. And both despair, and hope.