In 1933 at a summer holiday camp in Dymchurch, Kent organized for children in Church-run orphanages, destiny deemed a ten-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl would meet under the most bizarre circumstances. What the camp leader was to divulge to the children, would change their lives forever. Pointing one finger at the girl, then at the boy, she said simply, 'You two are brother and sister.'

This bizarre isolated meeting of author Caroline Whitehead and her brother William Marshall in their childhood years would develop, in time to come, into a tight-knit relationship that spanned decades. UNDER THE OLD RAILWAY CLOCK deftly illuminates for readers a time and place - England from the 1930s through to 2007. William was a sailor, hero, husband, father, gambler, coin collector, cook, flirt with the ladies - and a very dear brother.