Time slip

Ben Elton is perhaps best known as a comedian, but there are not many laughs in his novel Time and Time Again. It does raise a few wry smiles, but it's far more thoughtful than mirthful. It starts with an interesting premise: suppose you could go back in time to change one thing - what would it be?  I have no idea whether Ben Elton's version of Newtonian physics that explains the time shift is even vaguely possible, but it's a challenging idea. Before you start working your way through all of history to pick your moment, let me warn you - for purposes of the storyline, you're limited to arriving in 1914. Does that give you a clue?

The tale centres on Hugh Stanton, a former soldier who has no personal ties since the loss of his wife and children in a motor accident. A bunch of  Cambridge university professors persuade him to travel back to the months before World War One and charge him with a mission. He has to prevent the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo - the event generally accepted as the cause of the war - and so save millions of lives that would otherwise be lost in the conflict. But it soon becomes obvious that the academics' theory fails to take account of history's power.

Stanton arrives in the early twentieth century with good intentions, but quickly paves a path to hell as it becomes obvious that he must take several innocent lives in order to carry out his instructions. In fact the bodies fall fast at Stanton's hands and the butterfly effect of his killing begins to change history much earlier than the Cambridge Dons had planned.

Stanton spends much of the book trying to put right the wrongs he has caused, with much soul searching over the moral questions raised by his meddling. It makes for fascinating reading as an adventure story unfolds, but makes the reader agonise along with Stanton over the justification for his actions. I'd recommend it.