Is the Universe we inhabit the only one? Or are there countless others, some similar, some very different from the one we know? Are there worlds where the Harolds triumph at Hastings, and Richards at Bosworth?
When Jim Craven regains consciousness in hospital late one October afternoon, having narrowly survived a road accident, things are not as he remembers. It is still 2024, but society is strangely oldfashioned, with a political landscape more akin to that of the mid-twentieth century.
And the leading political actors are different. Craven has vague memories of there having been a German dictator called Adolf Hitler. Did such a man really exist? For in this new unfamiliar world Germany is a democratic country, whilst Britain is governed by a man named Alexander Hilton – a posturing, vainglorious, anti-semitic upstart with dreams of world conquest. Are Craven’s fading memories of Hitler an illusion? Should he pay any attention to them?
How do we know our memories are accurate? Did all our yesterdays really exist? Or is life a mere chimera or magic show, without any true reality? A Nazi England, headed by an English Hitler, was indeed a ‘Virgin’s Daughter.’ It didn’t happen. Or did it?