Autumn 1939, in a parallel world where Edward VIII never abdicated, a secret 'King's Party' is at work to broker a negotiated peace, and the Second World War might have taken a very different course...

 

''Charged with tension but also rich with period detail and thick with multifaceted characters...an expert blend of deed and fallout, tautness and release, suffused with moral complexity.'  Malcolm Forbes - Literary Review

"It is Taylor's achievement to have written a tense, page-turning thriller, within which there unfolds a sutble meditation upon where the quest for peace ends and the path to treason begin."  Graham Stewart - The Times

"In short, this is as skilful and enjoyable a novel as you can ask for, the work of a master-craftsman."  Allan Massie - The Scotsman

"A highly successful literary thriller... this is a novel that in asking 'what if' has captured, with precision, what was."  Christian House - Independent on Sunday

"A novel rooted in the past that leaves the reader genuinely unsure about what is coming next."  Robert Douglas-Fairhurst -  Weekend Telegraph

"...Taylor demonstrates how art - in this case fiction - can persuade and warn us by hypostaszising the "what if?" And at the same time he succeeds brilliantly in conveying the atmosphere of unreality that not only marked the absence of military action in the early months of the Second World War but was also the natural adjunct of the preparations for it."  Kate McCloughlin  -  Times Literary Supplement