Photo (c) Robin Christian
Kaliane Bradley
The Ministry of Time
in conversation with Eley Williams
Friday 11 April 2025, 7.30 - 8.30pm
Waterstones, Unit 72, Midsummer Place
Central Milton Keynes, MK9 3GA
In-person tickets: £10/£7
Livestream (Zoom): £5
‘Clever, witty and thought-provoking, asking the question of what any of us might do if we could engage live with people from the past. Kaliane Bradley is a wonderful writer’ - Kate Mosse
Join Kaliane Bradley as she discusses her extraordinary, award-winning debut novel, The Ministry of Time, with Eley Williams: a time-travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all.
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'. But with an appetite for discovery and a serious cigarette habit, he soon adjusts. During a long, sultry summer, he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship… and to something more.
But as the true shape of the project that united them begins to emerge, Gore and his 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?
About Kaliane Bradley
Kaliane Bradley is a British-Cambodian writer and editor based in London. Her short stories have appeared in Electric Literature, Catapult, Somesuch Stories and The Willowherb Review, among others. She was the winner of the 2022 Harper's Bazaar Short Story Prize and the 2022 V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. In 2024, The Ministry of Time, her first novel, was named the Dymocks Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Award.
More about Kaliane:
.jpg)
Photo (c) Alice Zoo
About Eley Williams
Eley Williams’ short fiction appears in anthologies including The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story, Pilot Press’ Modern Queer Poets, and Liberating the Canon edited by Isabel Waidner. Her novel, The Liar’s Dictionary, was awarded a Betty Trask Award, while her debut collection, Attrib. and other Stories, won the James Tait Back Memorial Prize. A second collection titled Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good is longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize this year.