Hello everyone, and welcome to my latest project: The Gaitskell Years. Inspired largely by a recent urge to write about a more modern Britain than that which I've previously covered, this will be somewhat different to my other works (if, indeed, one can describe them so generously) in that its focus will be on a very specific (and brief) time in British history. This is as much for my own benefit and sanity as because I've been toying with the idea for a while of charting the fortunes of a single person in British history - in this case, that man is Hugh Gaitskell.
Why Hugh Gaitskell? Well, that aspect of inspiration came after reading the Francis Beckett-edited The Prime Ministers Who Never Were, which got me thinking about how I might feasibly recreate some of the situations speculated upon in my own games and writing. Of all of the people included, Gaitskell jumped out the strongest. In our timeline, he died before ever becoming PM – yet his differences with his successor, Harold Wilson, and the general fun to be had with the sixties setting, provide some really fascinating what-ifs. (For people like me, anyway.
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The other main difference of this AAR to my other projects, as the eagle-eyed will have noticed, is that I have adopted a definite writer persona. Whilst I have never explicitly written as DensleyBlair, neither have I ever played with the idea of an author having a certain voice or concrete way of viewing things. With the relative proximity of the subject matter of what follows, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try that sort of thing out. (It also gives me an excuse to design Penguin covers, so a boon all-round really.)
Of course, there are many people without whom this project likely would never have come to anything. Of those on these forums, I must thank Tanzhang for his indispensable counsel over the last few weeks, both political and aesthetic; Tommy4Ever, for giving me the idea of using the
New World Order mod in his excellent
The Westminster System; and, of course, Bizon and the rest of the New World Order team. There are many other worthies out there, I'm sure, and so I must apologise if anyone feels I've missed anyone.
I hope you all enjoy what follows. I'm optimistic that I might actually finish this one – though I appreciate that people may be somewhat sceptical of that particular phrase. At this point, I should probably mention that this does not mean that
A Biography is in any way dead; if you're a reader (and, if so, what excellent taste you have!) please do not worry.
With that, I give you my many thanks, and I hope to see you all for the ride,
Densley