The Time Travellers: Secrets and Spies (The Time Travellers, 2)
Having had one adventure in the past (see HNR 108, Time Travellers: Adventure Calling), Suhana, Mia and Ayaan are eager for their phone’s time-travel app to whisk them away on another adventure. Holidaying in Edinburgh, they come across a sign in a museum encouraging people to consider the imperialist links of objects in its collection. The questioning this provokes triggers the app, and they are whirled away once again, on this occasion across continents as well as time to 1799 India and the court of the prince Tipu Sultan of Mysore at a crucial moment, when the East India Company were taking over amid accompanying conflict.
A young soldier named Imran becomes their guide to the circumstances in which they find themselves. The trio is charged with a mission to rescue a princess, and they have to work out who and where she is and why she needs rescuing. While they question whether what they are doing is meddling with history – forbidden where time travel is concerned – it turns out that their actions mean that one of Tipu Sultan’s descendants is able to make history too.
The background history and ideas that need to be conveyed are quite complex for a short novel, and occasionally there is a didactic feel, although the pace of the storytelling is not compromised. The trio discover how objects came to be scattered across many places, and they encounter objects they have seen on display in the 21st century, including an amulet holder they saw in the Museum of Scotland and the famous model of a tiger attacking a man they saw in the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Some matters are expanded upon in appendices, including one on Contested History, which provides a helpful framework for discussion around how museums are currently considering the contents of their collections.
