Historical Figure

As a teen in British boarding schools, Paul Watkins time traveled by writing stories set in the past. Now, the acclaimed novelist, toting duffel bags filled with wartime relics, enourages prep school kids to travel along.

It’s November 10, a week after George W. Bush was reelected, and occupation forces are trying to flush insurgents out of one of Iraq’s most dangerous cities. Alluding to the day’s headlines, Paul Watkins tells his history class that “air power is an integral part of any military assault. The attack on Fallujah, which began about 36 hours ago, began with an airstrike.” But now he wants to take the teenage students back 90 years, to when planes were far less deadly weapons. With their open cockpits, in which rifles were stowed for self-defense, early World War I aircraft served primarily as reconnaissance tools. Only occasionally did pilots take potshots at the enemy.

Watkins stands at the front of a small, white-walled classroom. Behind him are three sets of maps, the middle one flecked with red starbursts marking battles from the Great War. His 14 students—wearing bobby-soxer, peacenik, and leisure outfits for homecoming week’s “Decades Day”—sit at long tables. On the walls are prints of propaganda posters, all with the same theme: “Loose Talk Can Cost Lives.” There’s also a tattered Union Jack, a Watkins family heirloom. The sign next to it reads “This Flag Flew Above a British Regimental Command Post on the Somme 1916-17.”

Appropriately enough, Watkins looks like a figure from another era. Before the 9 a.m. class began, as young men and women mingled in the wood-paneled lobby of Annenberg Hall, I spotted him barreling across the Peddie School quad, a satchel slung across his tan tweed jacket. He’s 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighs 195 pounds, and once played rugby, so I almost expected him to flatten a few students. But, after bounding up the front steps, he deftly navigated the human obstacle course without stepping on a single toe. Watkins then blurted “good morning”...