Iszi Lawrence takes us back in time with The Time Machine Next Door series

The Time Machine Next Door: Artists and a Disappearing Dog

About Author

Iszi Lawrence takes us back in time to meet famous people from the past in her time-travel adventures, The Time Machine Next Door.

Iszi is a writer, comedian, podcaster and history presenter. She is a regular on TV history documentaries including shows for Sky History and Netflix. Her podcasts include The British Museum Membercast and science podcast, Terrible Lizards with Dr Dave Hone.

She is a regular visitor to schools and runs history workshops for Key Stage 2 and 3 students.

www.iszi.com / @iszi_lawrence

Interview

August 2025

Iszi Lawrence steps back in time with The Time Machine Next Door series (Bloomsbury Education)

Meet famous people from Leonardo Da Vinci to Henry VIII and get a glimpse of life in the past with Iszi Lawrence's funny and engaging time-travel series, The Time Machine Next Door!

Sunil's next door neighbour, Alex, is a scientist who's invented a time travel machine that runs on boredom to slow time itself - and send them backwards in time! Through their adventures in the past, Sunil and Alex get to see dinosaurs, chat with pharaohs and meet famous people that they have learned about in history. And there is never a boring moment . . .

Read out Q&A with author Iszi Lawrence - and learn how to make your own Time Machine!

The Time Machine Next Door series: Explorers and Milkshakes; Rule Breakers and Kiwi Keepers; Scientists and Stripy Socks; Rebellions and Super Boots; Artists and a Disappearing Dog; Inventors and Dinosaurs

Q&A with Iszi Lawrence: Find out about The Time Machine Next Door series - and create your own Time Machine!

"The only way I know how to slow time down is to do something really boring so it seemed only logical
a time machine would run on that principle."

1. Thank you for joining us on ReadingZone to talk about your time travel series, The Time Travel Machine Next Door. We've heard you're a comedian as well as an author, so do you prefer writing funny stories or historical fiction?

I write books for ME. Bloomsbury pretends that my books are only for kids, but they aren't. Loads of grown ups like them too. Historical fiction is always funny. People in the past were proper weird. And why should I bother spending all that time making stuff up when, for example, people used to use ash and oil to clean themselves, and have a nice little chat whilst doing it?!

2. What inspired you to travel through time with your characters Alex and Sunil in The Time Machine Next Door?

Well honestly it is because I was writing a lot of novels set in one place (The Unstoppable Letty Pegg, Billie Swift Takes Flight, Blackbeard's Treasure) and I wanted to visit MORE places in history but not have to write a whole long novel about each of them. Hence a time machine.

The only way I know how to slow time down is to do something really boring so it seemed only logical a time machine would run on that principle, that not only does time slow down when you are bored, you can stop it and, using the Boring Machine, get it to tick backwards.

3. What kinds of adventures do Sunil and his scientist neighbour Alex have?

Oh they've been sneezed on by Neil Armstrong, got mud in Cartamandua's great hall, met Elizabeth I in a tennis court, rescued Shackleton's cat, argued with Issac Newton, been accursed of witchcraft, put their fingers in Charles Darwin's worm jar, followed Rosa Parks home from school, been chased by a wolf with Genghis Khan, worn 15th century underpants and gone star gazing with Caroline Herchell.

They've met kings like Henry VIII, Richard III and Caractacus and learnt a bunch of cool facts about everything from hits by Creedence Clearwater Revival, to the advantage of recurve bows and the meaning of Farting Crackers.

4. What can we expect in their latest time travel adventures, Artists and a Disappearing Dog and Inventors and Dinosaurs?

You can expect to meet real artists from history, like Leonardo da Vinci . . . and real inventors from history, like Leonardo da Vinci. We meet a lot of real people in places all over the world, as well as an Allosaurus… or two.

The illustrator, Rebecca Bagley, makes the history come to life! We try to get her drawings accurate too, just like the story. She had a lot of work getting the Anurognathid pterosaur accurate, remembering to include its little bum wings!

5. Do you have anything in common with your characters, Sunil and his scientist neighbour, Alex?

Hmmm . . . I'm a lot less brave than Sunil . . . and less good at inventing things than Alex. I'm also taller than both of them. However, I do think there is something of Alex's disorganisation and Sunil's eagerness to see dinosaurs that I relate to.

6. What time-travel challenges do Sunil and Alex they face in these stories?

In Artists and a Disappearing Dog, the Boring Machine got stuck in the past and has lost its teddy. It's so upset it turns into a time bomb! Can our heroes work out the clues to get it back and save the day?

In Inventors and Dinosaurs, Alex had accidentally collected a pterosaur and the Boring Machine won't let her go back far enough to return him. She needs to collect the brainwaves of the world's cleverest inventors to power her thinking cap to come up with a solution.

7. Which historical figures will Sunil and Alex meet in their newest adventures? What is it like imagining and writing about real people from the past?

They will meet artists like Hokusai and inventors like Heddy Lamar! It is an absolute mind twister to imagine life in the past. Especially as we don't have all the information about exactly how they did everything. You have to use information from historians, books, the internet and museums to really build up an idea of what it was like.

8. Why do you want children to know about these historical periods and the people in them? What can we learn from history like this?

I think history, like fiction, is a great way to build empathy. Picturing yourself in other people's shoes and putting yourself in other people's cultures stretches your imagination muscle. What is it like not knowing if you are going to be successful? Where do ideas come from? What would YOU do if you had to enter a Greek bathhouse… where you aren't allowed to wear pants!

9. So how accurate are your stories about the periods you travel to, from dinosaurs to Leonardo Da Vinci? How do you research these times, and how do you fill in the blanks about what we don't know?

I try to make them as accurate as possible. So when you meet Leonardo in a specific time, where he is staying and who is living with him is accurate. I tend to not go to places where there are loads of gaps to fill in - that is what is so nice about historians and biographers, some stuff we have a really good idea of!

Otherwise, I have to give it my best guess, and use other historical examples to imagine what it is like the layout of a bathhouse in Syracuse, or what the dressing rooms were like on the set of an MGM production.

10. If you could step back into the time machine, where would you want it to take you and also which historical character would you want to meet?

Bronze age Thebes… I wanna check out Pharaoh Hatshepsut's gardens (also apologise to her for making her so scary in The Cursed Tomb).

. . . And what kinds of adventures do you enjoy having in real time?

I like to fight! I do jiu jitsu… I also play Dungeons and Dragons. I like to draw and one day I may be as good as Rebecca Bagley.

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