As its author explicitly stated, " (...)The idea of this book was suggested to me by Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

It has also been suggested that Ford's attempt to divorce his wife, Elsie Martindale Hueffer and marry Violet Hunt lies behind the novel's time-travelling theme.

[1] Unlike Twain's Hank Morgan and some successors, Ford's Mr. Sorrell makes only a very half-hearted attempt to build modern weaponry and machinery in the Middle Ages.

Instead, Mr. Sorrell finds that a golden cross which he carries causes him to be mistaken for a Greek miracle-worker – which has many advantages in medieval society, including enjoying the unlimited hospitality of a castle and having beautiful ladies vying with each other for his love.

It is the reverse of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but the details of daily life are rendered more feelingly, including the quite earthy and mercenary motivations of many of the medieval characters (for example, the small-minded power struggles taking place in a nunnery, under a very thin veneer of piety).