When the story overshadows the impact in Testing Times
Testing Times by Professor Peter Saville sets out to tell the story of a career that helped shape an entire industry. That alone makes it a compelling prospect.
Reading it, however, I found myself distracted by the balance of the narrative. Considerable space is given to childhood memories, personal anecdotes and detailed scene-setting, sometimes to the point of fixation. Descriptions of places, homes and early life moments linger, while the professional transformation at the heart of the book remains frustratingly underexplored.
This is a missed opportunity. Saville’s influence on assessment, psychometrics and organisational practice is significant, yet the reader is rarely taken inside the decisions, debates or resistance that accompanied that change. The “how” and “why” are often implied rather than examined.
The result is a book that feels more reflective than revealing. The personal story is present in abundance, but the industry story remains largely offstage. For readers interested in how systems evolve, how paradigms shift, or how change is actually driven at scale, that absence is keenly felt.
Testing Times is not without interest, but it ultimately prioritises memory over mechanism. For a career that reshaped practice, I was left wanting far more insight into the work itself.
