To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

This means the history department is run off their feet, especially Ned Henry who has been on countless drops to 1940’s jumble sales in search of The Bishop’s Birdstump, a truly hideous piece of Victorian artwork, yet one which had a profound effect on Lady Schrapnell’s great grandmother when she saw it in Coventry cathedral, and so something the reconstruction can’t do without.Īfter Ned collapses due to excessive time-lag (spouting poetry along the way), Professor Dunworthy decides the best place for him to recover is 1888, which not only gets him out of the way of the vengeful Lady Schrapnell, but also will allow him to return a cat which the well-meaning Verity Kindle somehow brought back to 2057 from the Victorian era, something which threatens to cause an incongruity and disrupt the whole space time continuum, since at least theoretically significant objects can’t be brought forward from the past. Lady Schrapnell insists that Every detail be correct, since as she frequently remarks “god is in the details”.

In 2057, Oxford university is in uproar thanks to Lady Schrapnell, an overbearing American socialite who is financing the history department to help her rebuild Coventry cathedral utterly destroyed by German bombs in the second world war. Where her first Oxford time travel story Doomsday Book is a profoundly human, deeply sensitive and moving take on the Black Death, this second in the series, despite featuring several of the same characters is an extremely funny, oddly gentle Victorian comedy of manners. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a perfect illustration of this. I’ve since read a good few of Connie Willis other short stories and have found the same thing about her myself, that she can don jester’s motley or the mask of tragedy with equal ease. The second, Ado probably the funniest and most artful take on political correctness I’ve ever read.

The first Schwarzschild Radius, a truly horrific comparison of the first world war and the event horizon of a black hole.

She illustrated this by reading me two of Connie Willis’ short stories.

I was first introduced to Connie Willis by a friend of mine (now herself a doctor of physics), who told me her favourite science fiction writers were those who could change their style and tone rather than always write in a similar way.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis