Hands of Time: A Watchmaker's History of Time. 'An exquisite book' - STEPHEN FRY

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History can sneak up on you. For instance, I had no idea I would read a book about watchmaking this year. I am equally as surprised that I loved it. However, I can't help but feel a tinge of sadness that the book was relatively short. Its captivating content left me yearning for more, and I'm seriously contemplating listening to it again. In fact, I was considering canceling my Audible subscription, but fortunately, I had a remaining credit which I wisely used to prebook this gem. It turned out to be an incredibly worthwhile investment. Oh, beautiful, yeah. When you get a good one with really lovely acoustics it gives you goosebumps. They’re lovely.

Bookshop.org: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/hands-of-time-a-watchmaker-s-history-of-time-rebecca-struthers/7386594?ean=9781529339031 There are a few books that have the power to make you feel truly happy. And this book is definitely one of them. From the moment I started listening to it on Audible, it brought me immense joy. It entertained and enlightened me with fascinating insights into the history of watchmaking, including significant figures like Louise Breguet, John Harrison and Thomas Mudge.A fascinating history of timekeeping from Harrison to Hamilton, from Sundials to Seikos. On the basis of the author's profession I had, I admit, mistaken it to be a book about watches. In fact only a handful of chapters at the end are dedicated to wrist watches. My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Harper for an advance copy on this book about time, what we make of it, how we tell it, and what our knowledge of time tells about about us. Hands of Time is an anthropology of human history through the lens of timekeeping/watches/horology. Anthropology is a subject I've only scraped the surface of in my studies so I was excited to give this book a go. Ripping the band-aid right off the bat: this is a decently dry book. I'm not talking about textbook style, but if you aren't at all interested in horology, this will be absolutely horrific to read. I really love objet d’art type watches. If I had the ability to make whatever I wanted, and didn’t have to worry about selling it, I’d go for something incredibly beautiful and decorative and ornate. And I’d include as many of [the] amazing crafts people [we work with] in as many different disciplines as possible. I have some ideas, actually. And that’s part of our 10-year plan. After 10 years of 248s we plan on not taking any more commissions and just making what we want to make. And then selling it when it’s done.

Hands of Time, published this week and BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’ starting May 8, is utterly fantastic in both the scope it covers and the economy it uses to bring new life to familiar tales. Today Struthers Watchmakers, based in a small studio in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, is celebrated around the world for its award-winning creations, as well as its dedication to promoting the painstaking craft of traditional watchmaking. (Rebecca is the first, and only, person in the UK to hold a PhD in watchmaking.)

In Hands of Time you mention Louis XVI’s court giving Abraham-Louis Breguet unlimited time and budget to make whatever watch he liked. Given that opportunity, what would you make? This point of difference has been both a blessing and a curse – as the antiquarian horologist makes plain in her fantastic debut book Hands of Time: A Watchmaker’s History of Time. Part-memoir, part-investigation into the history, art and science of watchmaking and a complete meditation on humankind’s relationship with time. How it has shaped our attitudes to work, to leisure, to trade and to mortality.

The book is also about your life and career. A recurring theme is people saying you can’t do something – and you proving them wrong. It starts with a teacher at school telling you Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days is too long and hard for you to read. You were eight. Have you chilled out a bit? You’re talking about highly bespoke watchmaking. But there is a handful of respected British brands flying the flag today. Bremont, Bamford, Fears… Is our global reputation improving? Rebecca Struthers weaves together a beautiful narrative exploring the major milestones and innovations which have led to the watches of today. She takes us on a journey through time, beginning by examining the very first examples of watches in the early 1500s. A personal history of timekeeping, unfortunately more focused on her own history than on the timekeeping mechanisms.I was somewhat expecting more than a memoir and more of a history of time measuring devices and watches, because the book’s subtitle states: “How humanity’s most profound technical achievement tells the story of time itself.” This was not the case. Throughout, I was reminded of Longitude by Dava Sobell, and Mudlark by Lara Maiklem. If you imagine the former but much longer and written by the latter, you'd have a fair idea of how this book reads. I loved both those books, so that's to be read as a strong recommendation from me. Brings up very interesting points about human history. I like that the book doesn't quite make the claim that we were shaped by the discovery of horology, but more that it reflects out world and society where it is. There are a ton of super well researched insights and I loved the historical tie-ins. It's easy to imagine Obama wearing a Rolex, but difficult to imagine Napoleon wearing a Breguet. Awesome to humanize these mythical figures a bit. She is very knowledgeable and doesn't bog the book down with too much over technicalities. Struthers then brings us through the golden age of watchmaking in the 1700s and 1800s, and details the major innovations of that time period. She eventually brings us all the way up to today, when many of us have Apple watches strapped to our wrists. Though we still enjoy wristwatches in a sense, the art of mechanical watchmaking is nearly lost to us. Another good line concerns Elinor Smith, the youngest person in the world to become a certified pilot, who set various records in the 1920s and 1930s with Longines timekeepers. The New York Times was so sure one of her challenges would end in disaster they wrote her obituary – 80 years too early. You say ‘I like to think we’d have got on’.

In Hands of Timewatchmaker and historian Rebecca Struthers welcomes us into the hidden world of watchmaking, offering a personal history of watches that spans centuries and continents. From her workshop bench, Rebecca explores the ways in which timekeeping has indelibly shaped our attitudes to work, leisure, trade, politics, exploration and mortality, and introduces us to some extraordinary and treasured devices, each with their own story to tell. If I look out from my office window, I see three huge buildings with 'Rolex' in discreet lettering on top, so it was interesting to read about how the Swiss watch industry grew as a mass market response to the high costs imposed by the strict guilds of London. Early Swiss watches were low-cost fakes - or at least lower-cost imitations of the English handmade luxury items. Rolex was the brainchild of a German advertising expert, who bought cheap Swiss movements, assembled them in London and marketed the resulting wrist watches as the perfect tool for the macho adventurer, in an era when wrist watches were generally seen as effeminate. Hands of Time” is Rebecca Struthers memoir of her experience as a watchmaker – or perhaps more accurately, as a horologist. My book is] not just watches, it’s time. And that’s a really fascinating subject. It affects us all, every day. So I’m pairing [watches] with these wider stories. [For example] comparing Hans Wilsdorf to what Albert Einstein was doing, as the two men who revolutionised our relationship with time and the 20 th Century in two very different ways. And how these two concepts relate to each other. Timepieces are one of humanity’s most ingenious innovations. Their invention was more significant for human culture than the printing press, or even the wheel. They have travelled the world with us, from the depths of the oceans to the summit of Everest, and even to the Moon. They regulate our daily lives and have sculpted the social and economic development of society in surprising and dramatic ways.Instead, it is a book that covers the full history of the world as it relates to timekeeping. How the measurement of time has been used to save lives, proclaim love, exploit workers, explore the world, fight wars, symbolise wealth, and sustain economies. In that way it's much more wide-reaching, and of wider appeal, than a book just about watches. It shows how timekeeping has underpinned, supported, or enabled a vast cross-section of historical events as wide-ranging as the French revolution and the moon landings - though the latter only garners a single short sentence. In watch circles people are often tribally divided into Omega or Rolex fans, and Struthers seems rather to be in the Rolex camp, dedicating at least a whole chapter to Rolex, and barely a sentence to Omega. I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of the Accutron, quartz, swatch, and digital watches, which felt like a fitting and complete way to finish the story. Also pleasing was the mature and socially aware discussion of difficult topics such as Nazi watches, British colonial history, the subjugation and exploitation of women, enslaved people, and children throughout history. I spend whole days working on mechanisms which can contain hundreds of tiny components. Each of them has a specific task to perform. Every morning when I sit at my bench, it is an adventure into a new timepiece with its own history to lose myself in. And in their history, we can find the history of time itself. The invention of timepieces was more significant for human culture than the printing press, or even the wheel. They have travelled the world with us, from the depths of the oceans to the summit of Everest, and even to the Moon. They regulate our daily lives and have sculpted the social and economic development of society in surprising and dramatic ways. Modernise. It was the only area of British industrialisation that lagged behind the continent when it came to the industrial revolution. We really resisted mass production and cost cutting… We tried to compete without adopting mass manufacturing techniques. It wasn’t seen as the future. We thought British watchmakers could make high-end watches for the few [and let] these other people make huge numbers of watches very cheaply. The irony is that [unfortunately] that couldn’t be more true today – with the tiny, tiny number of watches being made in the UK.