A great-aunt's bequest - a 200-year-old grandfather clock - sends historian Graeme Davison on a journey deep into his father's family's past. From their tribal homeland in the Scottish Borders he follows them to the garrison town of Carlisle, from industrial Birmingham to Edwardian Australia, and from the Great War to his own suburban childhood.

This is the story of an ordinary family's journey from frontier warfare and dispossession through economic turmoil and emigration to modest prosperity. At each step, we are led to reflect on the puzzles of personal identity and the mystery of time.

Based on a lifetime of creative scholarship, My Grandfather's Clock is a moving testament to the power of family history to illuminate the present.