Visiting a doomed queen

Book sixteen in my bookish Advent calendar is another children’s book. It’s another Puffin classic – A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley. This is an author that I know chiefly for her Little Grey Rabbit books which are written for a younger audience and which were not favourites of mine as a child.

A Traveller in Time is another time slip book and again about a lone child staying with relatives (see Book 13 here for the other one I have had in this calendar). In this book a child goes back in time and appears to become involved in the Babington plot which brought about the downfall of Mary Queen of Scots. I wonder if, when this was first written in 1939, most school children would have known about this piece of history – I am not sure that it’s taught at this age now.

I am not overly fond of historical novels although I read more of them now than I used to but I do try and avoid books set in the sixteenth century as it is a period I know something about and I don’t want to read a romanticised version of the history and characters. I also have very little sympathy for Mary Queen of Scots who made some quite alarmingly bad decisions, although possibly she had few options. I wouldn’t normally read this book for all these reasons but I will give it a go – maybe it will change my view of Mary or maybe the book won’t support her either.

This book has been in a Junior School library according to the stamp inside the front cover and it still has its protective cover (which I will remove). The book is in a good enough condition as it appears to be an edition from the 1970s, except for a coffee stain on one edge which won’t affect my reading of it.