Margins
Timekeepers book cover
Timekeepers
How the World Became Obsessed With Time
2016
First Published
3.41
Average Rating
360
Number of Pages

By the bestselling author of Just My Type : a “thoroughly enjoyable and illuminating” journey into the concept of time “stuffed with fascinating material” ( Observer, UK). Timekeepers is a book about our obsession with time and our desire to measure it, control it, sell it, film it, perform it, immortalize it and make it meaningful. In this fascinating, anecdotal exploration, award-winning author Simon Garfield has two simple to tell some illuminating stories, and to ask whether we have all gone completely nuts. Here, Garfield explores the nature of time through stories such the Beatles learning to be brilliant in an hour and a half; an Englishman arriving back from Calcutta, refusing to adjust his watch; Beethoven’s symphonic wishes being ignored; a US Senator’s speech that goes for 25 hours; the horrors of war frozen at the click of a camera; a woman who designs a ten-hour clock and reinvents the calendar; Roger Bannister living out the same four minutes over a lifetime; and a who prince attempts to stop time in its tracks. “Digressive, gossipy, thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining.”— The Sunday Times, UK

Avg Rating
3.41
Number of Ratings
1,073
5 STARS
12%
4 STARS
36%
3 STARS
37%
2 STARS
11%
1 STARS
4%
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Author

Simon Garfield
Simon Garfield
Author · 21 books
Simon Garfield is a British journalist and non-fiction author. He was educated at the independent University College School in Hampstead, London, and the London School of Economics, where he was the Executive Editor of The Beaver. He also regularly writes for The Observer newspaper.
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Timekeepers