Listen as three acclaimed actors read HG Wells’ early science fiction classic to open London Literature Festival. Christopher Eccleston, Emma Hamilton and Nikki Amuka-Bird perform at this reading of The Time Machine. Time travel has long been one of the great tropes of science fiction, but it was one 1895 novella that lodged the concept firmly in the public imagination. Blazing a trail across the epochs long before Doc Brown’s DeLorean or Doctor Who’s Tardis, HG Wells’ The Time Machine popularised the idea that one might travel through time much as we travel through space. HG Wells’ time traveller arrives in an England some 800,000 years on from our own. There – or rather, then – he discovers what appears to be a verdant paradise whose serene and playful inhabitants live without care or toil. But he soon discovers that humanity has split into opposing species defined by stark inequalities. While the ethereal Eloi idly enjoy the beautiful landscapes of the surface, the Morlocks toil among the machines of the subterranean tunnels below – yet even then, all is not quite as it seems. A complex commentary on late-Victorian England, HG Wells’ novel offers apt time-traversing insights into our own times of growing inequality and unsustainable exploitation of our environment. Text adapted by Claire Allfree, journalist and regular arts contributor to the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Metro. Directed by Artistic Director of WordTheatre®, Cedering Fox. Runtime: 7:30pm-9pm. Please arrive on time as latecomers may not be admitted. Customers will receive a ticket with a face value of either £25 or £20, subject to availability on the night as they arrive.