James Philip - Empire Day
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- Название:Empire Day
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- Год:2018
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It is the day before Empire Day – 4th July – the day each year when the British Empire marks the brutal crushing of the rebellion dignified by the treachery of the fifty-six delegates to the Continental Congress who were so foolhardy as to sign the infamous Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on that day of infamy in 1776.
It is nearly two hundred years since George Washington was killed and his Continental Army was destroyed in the Battle of Long Island and now New England, that most quintessentially loyal and ‘English’ imperial fiefdom – at least in the original, or ‘First Thirteen’ colonies – is about to celebrate its devotion to the Crown and the Old Country, of which it still views, in the main, as the ‘mother country’.
Yet all is not roses. Since 1776 in a world of empires the British Empire has grown and prospered until now, it stands alone as the ultimate arbiter of global war and peace. The Royal Navy has enforced the global Pax Britannia for over a century since the World War of the 1860s established a lasting but increasingly tenuous ‘peace’ between the great powers.
Nonetheless, while elsewhere the Empire may be creaking at the seams, struggling to come to terms with a growing desire for self-determination; thus far the Pax Britannica has survived – buttressed by the commercial and industrial powerhouse of New England stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific North West – intact for all that barely a year goes by without the outbreak of another small, colonial war somewhere…
This said, the British ‘Imperial System’ remains the envy of its friends and enemies alike and nowhere has it been so successful as in North America, where peace and prosperity has ruled in the vast Canadian dominions and the twenty-nine old and recent colonies of the Commonwealth of New England for the best part of two centuries.
In Whitehall every British government in living memory has complacently based its ‘American Policy’ on the one immutable, unchanging fact of New England politics; that the First Thirteen colonies will never agree with each other about anything, let alone that the sixteen ‘Johnny-come-lately’ new (that is, post-1776) colonies, protectorates, territories and possessions which comprise half the population and eight-tenths of the land area of New England, should ever have any say in their affairs!
New England is a part of England and always will be because, axiomatically, it will never unite in a continental union. Notwithstanding, in the British body politic the myths and legends of that first late eighteenth-century rebellion in the New World still touches a raw nerve in the old country, much as in former epochs memories of Jacobin revolts, Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War still harry old deep-seated scars in the national psyche.
Empire Day might not have originally been conceived as a celebration of the saving of the first British Empire and but as time has gone by it has come to symbolise the one, ineluctable truth about the Empire: that New England is the rock upon which all else stands, an empire within an empire that is greater than the sum of all the other parts of the great imperium ruled from London.
In past times a troubling question has been whispered in the corridors of power in London: what would happen to the Empire – and the Pax Britannica – if the British hold on New England was ever to be loosened?
Generations of British politicians have always known that if the question was ever to be asked again in earnest it has but one answer.
If the New World ever discovers again a single voice supporting any kind of meaningful estrangement from the Old Country; it would surely be the end of the Empire…
Coming soon: Book 2 – Two Hundred Lost Years; and Book 3 – Travels Through the Wind.
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The man said nothing.
“Your father, your brother William and when she gets out of hospital, if she lives…”
“Vicky’s in hospital?”
“Yes, she lost her baby. They won’t have told her that her husband is dead yet. They say he was in league with your father and together they conspired to blow up HMS Polyphemus as she was launched on Friday afternoon.”
Alex must have been staring at her like a madman.
“Oh, you don’t know about that?”
“I only flew down to Jamaica Bay on Friday evening. Sure, I heard about the accident, I flew over Wallabout Bay yesterday,” he hesitated, “assuming this is Monday…”
She nodded.
“I didn’t know it was sabotage…”
“John Watson was shot attempting to evade arrest by CSS officers.” Melody Danson did not give this time to sink in. “The CSS are trying to establish if your brother Abraham was in one of the other aircraft involved in the suicide attacks on the big ships yesterday.”
Alex tried to join up the pieces.
Nothing made sense.
Nothing except that he knew that Abe was nowhere near the Upper Bay at the time of the attack on the battleships. But if the CSS thought differently, then he was a marked man.
They had shot John Watson…
That guy was the straightest straight arrow he had ever met in his whole life!
But the CSS had shot him anyway…
They already had his father; and they had him, too.
If they were after Vicky as well this thing was insane, hopeless.
They did not have Abe .
And if he had anything to do with it they were not going to get their hands on him any time soon!
Alex tried to speak.
No sound other than a hoarse croak passed his lips.
Melody Danson leaned over him.
“Abe didn’t make it,” Alex gasped, slipping back into the darkness.
“Sorry, say that again,” the woman pleaded.
“Abe didn’t make it…”
Author’s Endnote
‘Empire Day’ is the first book in the New England Series set in an alternative North America, two hundred years after the rebellion of the American colonies was crushed in 1776 when the Continental Army was destroyed at the battle of Long Island and its commander, George Washington was killed.
I hope you enjoyed it – or if you did not, sorry – but either way, thank you for reading and helping to keep the printed word alive. Remember, civilization depends on people like you.
Oh, please bear in mind that:
Inevitably, in writing an alternative history this book has referenced, attributed motives, actions and put words in the mouths of real, historical characters.
No motive, action or word attributed to a real person after 28th August 1776 actually happened or was said.
Whereas, to the best of my knowledge everything in this book which occurred before 28th August 1776 actually happened!
THE NEW ENGLAND SERIES
COMING NEXT IN THE NEW ENGLAND SERIES
Other Books by James Philip
Main Series
Book 1: Operation Anadyr
Book 2: Love is Strange
Book 3: The Pillars of Hercules
Book 4: Red Dawn
Book 5: The Burning Time
Book 6: Tales of Brave Ulysses
Book 7: A Line in the Sand
Book 8: The Mountains of the Moon
Book 9: All Along the Watchtower
Book 10: Crow on the Cradle
Book 11: 1966 & All That
Football in The Ruins – The World Cup of 1966
Book 12: Only in America
Book 13: Warsaw Concerto
Book 1: Aftermath
Book 2: California Dreaming
Book 3: The Great Society
Book 4: Ask Not of Your Country
Book 5: The American Dream
Book 1: Cricket on the Beach
Book 2: Operation Manna
Prologue: Winter’s Pearl
Book 1: Winter’s War
Book 2: Winter’s Revenge
Book 3: Winter’s Exile
Book 4: Winter’s Return
Book 5: Winter’s Spy
Book 6: Winter’s Nemesis
Book 1: Until the Night
Book 2: The Painter
Book 3: The Cloud Walkers
Part 1: Main Force Country – September 1943
Part 2: The Road to Berlin – October 1943
Part 3: The Big City – November 1943
Part 4: When Winter Comes – December 1943
Part 5: After Midnight – January 1944
Book 1: Islands of No Return
Book 2: Heroes
Book 3: Brothers in Arms
Book 1: A Ransom for Two Roses
Book 2: The Plains of Waterloo
Book 3: The Nantucket Sleighride
Book 1: Interlopers
Book 2: Pictures of Lily
FS Jackson
Lord Hawke
Aftermath
After Midnight
A Ransom for Two Roses
Brothers in Arms
California Dreaming
Empire Day
Heroes
Islands of No Return
Love is Strange
Main Force Country
Operation Anadyr
Red Dawn
The Big City
The Cloud Walkers
The Nantucket Sleighride
The Painter
The Pillars of Hercules
The Plains of Waterloo
The Road to Berlin
Travels Through the Wind
Two Hundred Lost Years
Until the Night
When Winter Comes
Winter’s Exile
Winter’s Nemesis
Winter’s Pearl
Winter’s Return
Winter’s Revenge
Winter’s Spy
Winter’s War
Cricket Books edited by James Philip
Northamptonshire Cricket: A History [1741-1958]
Lord Harris
Volume 1: Notes & Articles
Volume 2: Monographs No. 1 to 8
No. 1 – William Brockwell
No. 2 – German Cricket
No. 3 – Devon Cricket
No. 4 – R.S. Holmes
No. 5 – Collectors & Collecting
No. 6 – Early Cricket Reporters
No. 7 – Northamptonshire
No. 8 – Cricket & Authors
Details of all James Philip’s published books and forthcoming publications can be found on his website www.jamesphilip.co.uk
Cover artwork concepts by James Philip
Graphic Design by Beastleigh Web Design
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