Going Into The Past

Going into the Past sounds at first like the title of a gentle educational pamphlet issued by a local museum in 1958. Which, in fairness, it almost is. But lurking beneath the reassuringly sensible Puffin exterior is something rather wonderful: a deeply enthusiastic invitation for children to become amateur archaeologists, poke around in muddy fields, and develop an unhealthy fascination with broken pottery.

Written by Gordon J. Copley, this book belongs to that glorious post-war era when Britain attempted to educate children by essentially saying, “Look over there, history is sticking out of the ground.” Modern educational publishing would likely involve interactive apps, augmented reality and cheerful cartoon Romans explaining sanitation. Going into the Past instead hands you a paperback and quietly encourages you to go rummaging through civilisation’s leftovers.

And honestly, there is something admirable about that.

The book treats archaeology with an almost magical seriousness. Every old coin, flint shard and suspicious lump of earth is presented as a thrilling clue to vanished lives. Copley writes with the patient optimism of a man who genuinely believes children might spend their weekends carefully examining Saxon ditch formations rather than throwing rocks into canals. In 1958, astonishingly, many probably did.

There is also the unmistakable atmosphere of British historical obsession running throughout. This is a country where roadworks routinely uncover a Roman villa, a plague pit or three mildly annoyed skeletons, and Going into the Past absolutely leans into that national condition. The message is essentially that history is everywhere beneath your feet, waiting to emerge the moment somebody decides to build a car park.

As a vintage Puffin, this edition has the full period charm package. The paper will have mellowed into that warm antique shade known technically as “old paperback beige.” The cover probably carries the faint aura of school libraries, damp cardigans and municipal museums with a reconstructed Iron Age hut out the back. Condition is Good, meaning it has survived over six decades of curious children, loft storage and perhaps one especially determined amateur historian armed with sticky fingers and a magnifying glass.

There is no ISBN because 1958 publishing still operated in a wonderfully analogue haze where books were identified primarily by memory, cover colour and whether your local librarian frowned approvingly when you borrowed them.

The accidental irony, of course, is that Going into the Past has itself now gone spectacularly into the past. What was once a modern educational paperback is now an archaeological artefact in its own right. Future civilisations may well excavate this Puffin edition and conclude that mid-20th-century Britain consisted entirely of windswept children earnestly searching hedgerows for Roman brooches.

A delightful relic from the age when learning was expected to involve mud, patience and an alarming willingness to crawl through hedges in search of fragments of medieval roofing tile.

Keep browsing: See more History books Other books by Gordon J Copley