'A sparkling delight' OBSERVER

'Both goofy and emphatically serious' FINANCIAL TIMES

'A triumph' DAILY MAIL

'I loved its combination of extreme whimsy, high seriousness and cool understatement' SUNDAY TIMES

'A smart, gripping work that's also a feast for the senses' LOS ANGELES TIMES

'Readers, I envy you: There's a smart, witty novel in your future' WASHINGTON POST

'Give in to the tide of this book, and let it pull you along' GUARDIAN

A BOY MEETS A GIRL. THE PAST MEETS THE FUTURE. A FINGER MEETS A TRIGGER. THE BEGINNING MEETS THE END. ENGLAND IS FOREVER. ENGLAND MUST FALL.

In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel.

Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' - Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as 'washing machine', 'Spotify' and 'the collapse of the British Empire'. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more.

But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?