This week, we take a look back at Fintan O'Toole's pre-election assessment of Keir Starmer; and revisit a conversation with William Boyd.

'Keir Starmer: The Biography', by Tom Baldwin

'November 1942: An Intimate History of the Turning Point of World War

II’, by Peter Englund', translated by Peter Graves

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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To kick off our new series on counterfactual histories David talks to the geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford about whether ‘What Ifs’ make sense in science. If one person doesn’t make the big discovery, will someone else do it? Are scientific breakthroughs the product of genius or of wealth and power? And how might the world have been a completely different place if the Haber-Bosch process had not been developed in Germany in 1913?

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Next time: What if… the French Revolution had happened in China?

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