Time and time again / by Ben Elton.

'We must think of time not as a perfect spiral but rather as a disobliging slinky in which once in a while coils get crossed. To put it simply, time will, on rare occasions, pass through the same set of dimensions twice.' This is the secret known only to The Companions of Chronos, a shadowy collective of scientists and academics who have gathered together at Trinity College Cambridge on New Year's Day 2024 to discuss correcting history's single greatest mistake and thus save civilization from itself. They intend to prevent The First World War, that collective suicidal madness which destroyed European civilization and bequeathed to the world the genocidal 20th Century. A conflict which The Companions believe was caused by one man - an unbalanced, bullied and belittled outsider who began a global war to get even with his own family. It is the 1st of June 1914 and Hugh Stanton, ex-soldier and celebrated adventurer, is quite literally the loneliest man on Earth. No one he has ever known or loved has been born yet. Not even those who sent him on his mission, a mission which will take him to Sarajevoa and on to Berlin.