For people living in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century, it was a time of extreme challenge and unprecedented change. The century had begun in the reign of Queen Victoria, and by the half way mark, two world wars and a growing list of new inventions had lifted the world into a completely new era. What was it like to live just before the world of television, central heating, antibiotics, the National Health Service, motorways and the internet … to experience smogs, barrage balloons and rationing, and to feel helpless as the League of Nations failed to prevent the Second World War? What was it like to qualify as a dentist in London during the early 1930s and to lose your home as a result of the London Blitz? What was it like to long for change, and how could ordinary people find a way of helping to make change possible? A Question of Time offers a glimpse into the lives of two ordinary people who happened to live in those times. They kept diaries and they had memories; they wrote and they spoke; they were Leslie and Joan Sparey, and they were my parents. This is their story.