George Tomkyns Chesney, The Battle of Dorking

A fabulous Victorian scaremonger over-reacting to the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War. It’s an alternative history in which Bismarck’s troops were not sated by occupying Paris, but annexed France, torpedoed our fleet in the channel and then the dreaded Hun invaded Sussex. Just like in War of the Worlds, if you capture the Surrey Hills and Putney, then apparently the whole British Empire crumbles. It’s incredible to think what an influence these armchair generals and their scare stories had on British public opinion and Foreign Policy, leading Britain to think of Germany as an enemy when there was so little geopolitical conflict between Britain and Germany; one a naval power, one a land power, one a global power, one a Central European power. Erskine Childers has a lot to answer for. There’s a moral in there somewhere. Don’t let idle young men pootle round Frisian sandbanks in a skiff without having a good book to occupy them, maybe. Apparently it leads to global conflict and the accelerated decline of the British Empire.