TO WIN A CROWN

TO WIN A CROWN

"History, as they say, belong to the victor. Over the years, viewpoints invariably become accepted as fact. It is the writen's job to question that fact, to push at the boundaries of established belief and - possibly - to suggest other ways of looking at things. These stories are speculations no more, no less. They are possible alternatives to current beliefs and, as such, may well be regarded as Speculative Fiction. The one element that is common to them all is their intention to weave the storyteller's web - without that gentle meshing of image and idea that might just as well have been written as pure interpretative history. All the characters portrayed here are real people, men and women who actually existed. It is important to note that the stories are not always meant to be taken totally seriously. Or are they? I may have written them with a decided (tongue in cheek) feel but that does not mean that they might not be true and accurate dispositions of how things really happened. At the end of the day, it remains up to the reader to decide on that particular issue."

Phil Carradice



"The stories contained in this book present an alternative view of history or, rather, of certain historical events - which we have always taken for granted. They are works of fiction and, as such, are not meant to be seen as absolute or literal truths. They are all based on real events or legends and often differ only in minor detail from the accepted versions that we know so well. People do things, whatever their motive, whatever their reasons, and other people interpret those actions. Who is to say if their interpretation (or even their understanding of what happened) is the corect one?"

"History has always fascinated me as I believe it can fascinate any thinking person, whatever their age and nationality. These stories are about the British and, sometimes, world history. That is as much accident as design and any writer with an intuitive sense of history could as easly produce similar pieces about hundreds - thousands - of other topics, be they based in Britain, America, Romania or anywhere. People, events, the development of thought and ideas - those are the ingredients of history and, as in this case, alternative histories. If nothing else, I hope that my enthusiasm for the subject comes through in these stories. Then try, sometimes quite hard, to catch the mood of their times, the particular and peculiar moments in which they occured. A sense of history I hope, imbues them all. At least that is the aim."

This volume is the result of the author’s vast experience in teaching history, as he became over the years increasingly aware of the fact that there is an alternative way of looking at history and that this often challenging science turns into and exciting an highly instructive adventure when students are allowed to have their own perspective on things and decide for themselves whether they are willing or not to take the "facts" of history for granted. The lexical exercises at the end of each story take this pedagogic effort to the next level, as the enhancing of the students proficiency in English while learning about history can become part of the more ambitious project of training them to see knowledge as a sort of great map with many "provinces".

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