In the summer of 2026, a classified file is released. It had been sealed seven years earlier, to be opened only after Dr Francis Shepherd was gone from this version of events. His solicitor had already warned him what it could cost him.

The file begins with what should have been a routine job for a government veterinarian: an untagged sheep in a Wiltshire field.

The sheep talks and she remembers things she could not possibly have witnessed.

What follows stretches across two thousand years, from Rome in 58 BC to Elizabethan England, a failed utopian experiment in America in 1826, 1930s London, Venice in 1500, Delphi, and a celebrity trial in 2005 where the public has begun reaching its own conclusions before the court delivers a verdict.

The places, arguments and circumstances are different, but Dr Shepherd begins to notice that some things have a habit of returning. The Sheep, apparently, has known this for quite some time.

What connects a witch trial, a failed utopia, political idealism, public accusation, and an untagged sheep that keeps turning up in the wrong century?

Each chapter enters a different period and has a story of its own, while Shepherd’s journey continues through them all. Events in one period sometimes cast a different light on another, and something that seemed unimportant fifty pages ago may turn out not to have been so unimportant after all.

There is history here, and satire, time travel, philosophy and dry British humour. There is also a Sheep with very little patience for authority and opinions about grass.

Think of it as a buffet, the good kind you get on cruise ships. There is plenty to choose from, and not every dish has to be for everyone. Take what appeals to you and leave what does not. That is rather the point of a buffet.

There are questions about history, truth, power, memory, and our remarkable ability to repeat ourselves while insisting that this time is completely different.

There was a cat. It sat inside a box. Alive or dead, the answer waited for someone to look.

This book contains a sheep whose status remains classified.

Open the file.