We all know that there was nothing inevitable about much of modern Ireland's history. Things could have turned out very differently, so it is natural to wonder what would have happened if certain events had never occurred or happened in a different way. This book asks the question: What if? This was the starting point for Diarmaid Ferriter's RTE Radio One series on which this book is based. He looks at twenty events in twentieth-century Ireland and discusses each with two experts to speculate on how things might have developed had circumstances been different. In doing so, the programmes also shed much new light on what actually did happen; how Ireland changed during the course of the twentieth century and the experiences of those who lived through it. The big questions are tackled: what if there had been no 1916 Rising; if Ireland had been invaded during the Second World War; if there had been no programmes for economic expansion; if Mary Robinson had not been elected president in 1990?
But the book also poses other, less obvious, questions: what if Joyce and Beckett had stayed in Ireland; if Britain had blocked Irish immigration in the 1950s; if there had been no 'Late Late Show', or 'Magill' magazine or no Ben Dunne revelations; if Bishop Eamon Casey had never met Annie Murphy, or John Charles McQuaid had never been Archbishop of Dublin? 'What If?' not only offers a glimpse of what might have been, it is also an entertaining, thoughtful, provocative and original look at some of the milestones of twentieth-century Irish history.