I, Alastair (novel)
I, Alastair was the sixth novel in the seventh series of Lethbridge-Stewart, released under the banner of Bloodlines, by Candy Jar Books in 2020.
Publisher's summary
Hail the Leader!
Under the gentle guidance of The Leader, Britain has flourished after the removal of the dead hand of democracy and the old, corrupt aristocracy. Dominant in Europe, a great power around the world, the Republic stands as a beacon to wise, benevolent and firm leadership.
The team led by column leader Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart is the best and brightest of us all, ensuring that attempts to overthrow the natural order will be stamped into submission.
Those who stand with the leader ensure that Britain remains great, a power to be reckoned with, and a dominant force across the globe.
Unity is strength.
Plot
to be added
Characters
- Column Leader Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart
- Ben Knight
- Spencer Pemberton
- James Lethbridge-Stewart
- Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
- John Benton
- Sally Wright
- Anne Travers
- Edward Travers
References
- The real-life fire at Windscale nuclear facility is much worse in this timeline, killing Seascale village and causing the end of British nuclear industry.
- Excerpts from a suppressed memoir are used to worldbuild and exposit on the Party's ideology, a possible reference to a banned memoir doing the same in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
- Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart refers to Britain killing Charles de Gaulle and ensuring France retained Algeria: in our timeline, from 1960 to 1972 there were attempts at coups and assassinations against De Gaulle by nationalists afraid he'd accept Algerian independence.
- Anne Travers and her father work at The Vault.
- Lethbridge-Stewart fought in Aden, a detail from the books about his counterpart - but this version of Lethbridge-Stewart committed massacres of civilians to win.
- A painting of Robert Walpole, the de facto first Prime Minister, hangs in the Cabinet meeting room.
- Robert Dougall hosts Nine O'Clock News as he did in real life (though in real life it started in 1970).
Notes
- This is the first appearance of Benton in the Lethbridge-Stewart range, and as such features a creator credit for Derrick Sherwin, who created the character for TV: The Invasion.
Continuity
- Knight remembers meeting the 'false' Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart nine years ago, as depicted in PROSE: The Schizoid Earth. That puts this story in 1968 - the same year that the first Lethbridge-Stewart books were set.
- The book states the Bolsheviks lost the Russian Civil War and Knight is relieved not to be captured by "Tsarists"; the White Russians winning was started by The Face of the Enemy.
- Oblique references are made to Alastair having a covered-up past. [PROSE]]: The Schizoid Earth had him come from an alternate timeline.
Errors
- Knight refers to meeting the 'false Lethbridge-Stewart eight years ago a few paragraphs after saying it was nine years.
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