The writing was a bit weird; it was something that I had not encountered before, the POVs kept shifting to people I did not know (I did not understand it at all, to be honest), but it all made sense after I found out what Young and Zuckermann were up to. I found myself really enjoying Stephen Fry's delve into a different history and the effects on the present. I think I read somewhere once that the first rule of timetravel is that you try to kill Hitler, and the second rule is that it either doesn't work, or things get even worse.

Young and Leo Zuckerman - the young British historian and the elderly German physicist at the centre of the story - are engaging, believable, and well-rounded characters, and the situations into which they are thrown are, as I said, thrilling and involving and page-turning stuff. However, I knew enough about Stephen Fry to be intrigued as to how he would handle the subject and how he would tie up the various parallel story lines. So one of the things I wanted to explore was the obvious question: if that particular sperm had not hit that particular egg, would my family be alive?I put the gay politics in Making History, obviously because that’s a personal thing, but also because, in 1996, it felt so apparent that [being gay] was not an issue. On one level, the narrative just seems to take umbrage at Michael’s ego and conviction that he can make history better. 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. Sometime later, I made a documentary about mental health breakdowns [ Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, 2006].

Other irritations included the way the story occasionally turns into a film script, and the way that in the sections dealing with Germans, the English text is larded with German words. Ostensibly the premise holds as much sophistication as a drunken parlor game, or worse, another Back to the Future movie. I liked how Michael and Steve's relationship evolved, although I'd have liked to see a bit more of it. Every morning when I awoke and stared at the ceiling and listened to Jane’s gentle snoring it flooded my gut, a dark swell of recognition that here was another pissing day to be got through as me. But tinkering with time lines is more dangerous than they can imagine, and nothing - past, present or future - will ever be the same again.

The way that Fry balances the serious nature of the subject with his trademark wit is the most stunning aspect of Making History, and the most rewarding.