Time for a change

Award winning and bestselling author, Simon Garfield take a tour across time in this age of atomically precise devices and look at some of the ways in which time is represented, and meets with makers and advertsiers of Swiss watches and Roger Bannister the first runner of a sub-four-minute mile. He also looks at management consultancy, photography and several alternative systems measuring time including a women invents ten-hour clock and reinvents French Republican calendar.

These are some of the entertaining and compelling stories in the book that explores our obsessions with time, an Englishman arrives back from Calcutta and refuses to adjust his watch, Beethoven has his symphonic wishes ignored, the time table arrives by steam train, a British watchmaker competes with Switzerland and a prince attempts to stop time in its tracks. Managing time is the greatest challenge we face in our lives and help us to tackle time in a sparkling new way. From time in memorial human beings told time by looking up at the stars.

Timekeepers: How the World Became Obsessed with time. By Simon Garfield Canongate £16.99,  368 pages.