The Story of the Amulet

Half an amulet bought in a London shop opens the past to four children and a Psammead, and sends them to Babylon, Atlantis, Caesar's camp and a future London where nobody is poor. Nesbit was a founding Fabian and wrote her politics into the last chapter without apologising for it; In its future London children are named Wells, after "the great reformer". It is the funniest of her stories and the only one with a genuine ache in it. Fifty-six paintings by David Wilkie and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, from Roman studios to children at marbles and a snowbound Berlin, give these four time-travellers the everyday world they keep landing in.