Victor Watson

Time After Time

A young Anglo-Saxon woman is travelling across an empty East Anglian landscape. She’s dressed as a man, for safety. But when her only companion is murdered, she knows she faces discovery, and almost certainly much worse.

In the Napoleonic period, a little boy has to walk several miles to market, on his own, for the first time.

In the present day, a mixed-race teenage girl – along with her best friend Rob – faces the difficulties of extreme shyness and mutism.

There is another presence too. Professor Molly Barnes – an archaeologist in her eighties – unwittingly presides over the narratives, looking back at her own coming-of-age, recalling her earliest memories of friendship, and questioning her own profession and its capacity to discover true versions of history.

Time After Time is a coming-of-age novel, written from an adult perspective. It is set in the East Anglian countryside, and links three different stories to the archaeological discovery of a Roman mosaic floor and a mysterious Anglo-Saxon bracelet.

Victor Watson has written two adult novels, and the five Paradise Barn WW2 novels for younger readers. Before that he wrote and co-authored academic books on the history of children’s literature. He edited The Cambridge Guide to Children’s Books in English. For a number of years he was a trustee of Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books, in Newcastle. He was chairman when it was opened in 2005. He lives in Saffron Walden.