I am aware that my extreme aversion to this literary device is subjective – probably connected to the fact that books are my first and major love, while films are okay, I suppose…. That result could not have been achieved solely by sterilizing Jewish men through the "Braunau Water".

Barely two stars, one being for the alternate outcome for Europe that Fry imagined and described well and succinctly. Making History is funny, moving, romantic and told with Stephen Fry's characteristic skill and brilliance. In one scene, Hitler tricks Gloder into a foolhardy heroic act and getting himself killed; but in the changed history, where Hitler was never born, it is Gloder who tricks another soldier into this act, and gets decorated for recovering his body. Alterations is like the century egg Kevin eats: On the outside, it looks like a story about middle school drama, but once you bite in, you realize the family dynamics are the umami flavor you can’t ignore. Narrated by two of the finest voices possible, the author himself and the unmistakable rich tones of Richard E Grant.The book switches between chapters focusing on the "present", 1994 with struggling Michael and his life, and the past where we get to know Adolf Hitlers mother, her abuse by Alois and so on. Stephen Fry tackles this in a best-of-all-possible worlds way in Making History, where his protagonist succeeds in averting Hitler’s birth only for someone more charismatic and cunning to rise to power in his place. Why has it taken so long, I do not know, but finally it is here, and finally I can hear this book again. In this way Fry reaffirms what is most important: the close, personal relationship between two human beings, and the reminder that we are responsible for making a better world.

He crosses paths with a theoretical physicist who shares a painful personal story and, combined with access to an ex-girlfriend's pharmaceutical project at work -- proposes "let's make sure Hitler was never born. Thumbing through the opening pages, I noticed that this book was first published in 1996, which begins to make sense when considering some of the faultlines running through this alternate history offering. With Michael and Steve's help, they plan to send a dead rat to poison the well so that it will be pumped clean of the sterilising water.

The best part of the book was the alternate world that Fry imagined, with a very different outcome to the Second World War from the one we know.