From the internationally bestselling author Jeffrey Archer comes Only
Time Will Tell, the first in the ambitious Clifton Chronicles series
that tells the story of one family across generations, across oceans,
from heartbreak to triumph.
The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1920, with the words I
was told that my father was killed in the war. A dock worker in Bristol,
Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from
his uncle, who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he's left
school. But then an unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an
exclusive boys' school, and his life will never be the same again.
As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really
died, but the awful truth only leads him to question, was he even his
father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore who spent his whole
life on the docks, or the firstborn son of a scion of West Country
society, whose family owns a shipping line?
This introductory novel in Archer's engrossing series The Clifton
Chronicles includes a cast of colorful characters and takes us from the
ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when
Harry must decide whether to take up a place at Oxford or join the navy
and go to war with Hitler's Germany. From the docks of working-class
England to the bustling streets of 1940 New York City, Only Time Will
Tell takes readers on a journey through to future volumes, which will
bring to life one hundred years of recent history to reveal a family
story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have
imagined.
