The Very First Damned Thing
The Very First Damned Thing follows Dr Bairstow as he establishes St Mary's after the fighting at the Battersea Barricades.
AI-generated illustration inspired by St Mary’s; not a book cover.
About this story
The Very First Damned Thing follows Dr Bairstow as he establishes St Mary's after the fighting at the Battersea Barricades. Before there can be historical expeditions, he needs people, money and somewhere to put them. Opposition from a historical-building protection society complicates the job.
The publisher's description connects the founding effort with stolen furnishings, a demonstration at Waterloo and a distinctly unconventional collection of recruits.
Our view: the attraction here is seeing the institution assembled from its practical beginnings. Readers already familiar with its chaotic working life can approach it as an origin story, noticing the difference between founding an organisation and keeping one under control.
Read the ebook individually or find it at the start of The Long and the Short of It. Although its subject is the institute's beginnings, the site's suggested sequence places it after No Time Like the Past.
The listed author-narrated UK unabridged recording runs for 2 hours 31 minutes.
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Where this fits
If you like this, try…
- No Time Like the Past · St Mary’s
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong? · St Mary’s
- The Long and the Short of It · Standalone & collections
Edition details & sources
Confirmed
- Series position
- Shorter work in suggested sequence
- First published
- 2015 · publication source ↗
- Audiobook
- Jodi Taylor · 2 hr 31 min
Edition details
Publication & edition date trail
UK Digital audio · English · Unabridged
Listed audio release: 9 December 2025.
Author-narrated recording. Other recordings, including the collection performance, may have a different narrator and runtime.
UK Ebook · Headline Publishing Group
ISBN 9781472264503 · released 1 January 2019
Publisher ebook sourceConfirmed premise: Publisher description ↗
Large print
No large-print edition details are listed for this title.
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