Comic yarn set in the same time-traveling universe as the splendid Doomsday Book (1992), with some of the minor characters in common. In 2057, the fearsome, slave-driving Lady Schrapnell has lent her authority and her money to developing time travel so that she can rebuild Old Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by Nazi bombs in 1940. After too many recent missions, operative Ned Henry is timelagged and in need of a complete rest. But Lady Schrapnell has another vital task for poor Ned: to locate a grotesque Victorian artifact known as the bishop's bird stump. A chronological complication that Ned is only dimly aware of, though, has arisen and must be fixed before history is changed. So a bewildered Ned finds himself in Oxford in 1889, wearing boating clothes, accompanied by a mountain of luggage, a regal cat in a box, and no idea what he's supposed to do next. Finally, after drifting along the river in an unintentional parody of Three Men in a Boat, he locates his contact, Verity Kindle (she caused the problem in the first place). There's a downside to all this slapstick, of course: Unless Ned and Verity resolve the problem, the Nazis will win WW II. Gleeful fun with a serious edge, set forth in an almost impeccable English accent.
