BOOK REVIEW / Britannia ruled from Berlin: No retreat - John Bowen: Sinclair-Stevenson, pounds 14.99

BRITAIN has been invaded by the Germans, the French, the Chinese, the Russians, the Jews, and a sinister race of subterraneans. Novelists from the Watch Out school of fiction have been happy to tap into a nation's fears, or even to create them in the first place: beware Krauts under the bed or possibly Frogs under the Channel.

Before the First World War, Britain was invaded by invasion prophecies, most of an anti-German nature, such as When William Came by Saki, in which the area served by the Southern Region turned into a Battle of the Somme. There was the Battle of Dorking, the Siege of Portsmouth and, in a rare upbeat moment, the Victory of Tunbridge Wells.

The trouble with prophecies is that they are often proved wrong. It is much more sensible to go for an Alternative History yarn with a What If theme. In No Retreat, John Bowen joins the queue of authors who imagine that D-Day never happened and that Britain lost the war. By the 1990s, the country has become one big Vichy. There is a German in Windsor Castle (there is, of course, but Bowen means a real one appointed by Berlin) pulling the strings, while an impotent British Government-in-exile is based above a sex shop in Washington DC. Apart from having autobahns and marks instead of motorways and pounds, life for the British is much as it was before; for most of the time they are not under the jackboot but under the bedroom slipper.

According to the book's blurb, Bowen has been compared with Proust (I cannot imagine why) and P G Wodehouse, who did once write a spoof invasion scare novel, The Swoop] or How Clarence Saved England, in which Britain was swamped by nine different nations, including Morocco and Monaco. Failing to tap any latent anti-Moroccan hysteria, it was soon forgotten.

Like Wodehouse, Bowen posits a Britain of reluctant Jobsworthies, with Briton prepared to enslave fellow-Briton - only obeying orders, Mein Herr. Five British agents arrive from the USA to stir up a freedom movement, realising after the submarine has dumped them on a Welsh beach that it was a one-way ticket. They stumble across a rudimentary resistance organisation and are interrogated by men in Mickey Mouse masks. They are forced to disguise themselves as monks or earn a living as insurance salesmen. No wonder one of them gives up and moves in with a woman who makes promotional videos.

Unfortunately the book prompts a What If of its own. What if it had a better beginning? The first chapter is full of characters telling each other what they already know in order to bring the reader up to speed with the Alternative History. And throughout, the thriller writer and the comic novelist are in hand-to-hand conflict. Often the best man, ie the black humorist, wins, managing to find the funny side even in a village wiped out in an act of reprisal: the men awaiting execution insist on confessing their sins to a reluctant fellow-victim. This may not be Proust, but it's no 'Allo 'Allo either.

(Photograph omitted)