Norman Wells

From his impoverished childhood in a working-class English family, to his determination to educate himself at any cost, to the serious ill health that dominated his 20s and 30s, his complicated marriages, and love affair with socialism, the first 40 years of H. G. Wells' extraordinary life would set him on a path to become one of the world's most influential writers. In this remarkable, empathetic biography, Claire Tomalin paints a fascinating portrait of a man like no other.

In 1903, Louisa, an impoverished young widow goes to Glastonbury to care for her ailing aunt. One day while sitting beside the ruined abbey church, she experiences a vision from the past of a woman who was guardian of one of the three sacred wells on the Isle of Avalon - the red and white wells situated at the foot of the Tor are known to this day, but the black well, which reveals the future, has lain unrecognized for centuries. Further visions follow, revealing the lives of the women whose gift of seership marked them out as keepers of the dark well.

Norman Gilligan provides just the right amount of British accent narrating The Time Machine, a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. Wells is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively. The term time machine, coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle.