Dear Cloggo, could you please customise a time machine for me and program it for 1870.
I should like to begin in London, visiting Dickens before he dies in June, then travel by train across northern Europe in the summer and arrive in Germany in time for Wagner’s wedding to Cosima in August. Of course I will attend performances of Das Rheingold and Die Walkure (newly completed) in Munich as well. I may also get a handle on his (and Germany’s) anti-Semitism during a few months’ there, and meet Nietzsche.

From there I would like to fly - oops, sail from Hamburg, I guess - to New York and visit Mark Twain while he’s still editing the Buffalo Express and staying in one place.
Then I plan to sail to Dublin, and see if I can spot the young Oscar Wilde at Trinity College (he’s bound to stand out).
Just need to be back in England by late 1871 for the launch of Through the Looking Glass and a meeting with Charles Dodgson, where he can sign a first edition of the book.
After that it will be home to the antipodes for about 50 80 years’ rest so I can be born into challenging circumstances in suburbia, New Zealand. (Different time machine for the return home?)
Thanks, Cloggo. I know you will deliver on this.