The History of Time: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback)

The book has seven chapters, the opening one of which is the day. The day is the most easily recognised astronomically defined period, but Holford-Strevens shows that there are still problems in measuring it. For instance, when does it start? At sunrise? At sunset? At midnight? The need to come to a common measurement is the central them of chapter one, which ends with the adoption of Universal Time by a reluctant France.

Chapters two (Months and Years) and three (Prehistory and history of the modern calendar) follow. The earlier chapter is effectively an introduction to the astronomical basis of what follows, explaining where the concept of month and year come from. The later chapter may touch on prehistory, but I must have blinked and missed it. This is no loss as the firm evidence for prehistoric calendars is slight. The chapter instead draws from the Roman Republican period through the acceptance of the Gregorian calendar, in one form or another, across Europe. This section is rather brief, but it the problem is rectified by chapter four, Easter. Effectively this is a case study of how you work out the time for the major event in the liturgical calendar. Interestingly Holford-Strevens doesn’t just chronicle the development of the mechanics of calendar. He also shows how time-keeping is political. How could protestant countries adopt a Catholic reformation of the calendar?

Chapter five, weeks and seasons, deals with non-astronomically defined periods of time, though an ancient Babylonian may disagree. Essentially unlike a day, month or year, there is no compelling reason to have a seven week calendar, and many good reasons not to. This chapter shows the important of the week in the Jewish faith and how there has been a fight to ensure the week remains even in recent times. It also mentions the aftermath of the French Revolution and the attempt to decimalise time, with no lasting success.

The book is hugely dominated by the classical tradition. Only in chapter six is there much discussion of other cultures such as the Chinese or the Mesoamericans. This is the weakest chapter of the book. It’s not that what is written is wrong, but summarising the magnificently intricate calendrical systems of Mesoamerica (and which one, the Mayan? the Aztec?) in just two small pages of text is so slight that you can’t help but wonder if the space could have been better used embellishing the core text, which is rather good.

The book ends with the naming of years and, later, eras. Again the chapter is more superficial than I would have liked. There is a lot you can say about this even from a purely classical perspective. There is the real problem of lack of space, but dropping chapter six could have made more space for Holford-Strevens to do what he does well. However, it’s the nature of these books that aspects will always have to be sacrificed. It certainly not as good on the classical period as Robert Hannah’s recent book on Greek and Roman Calendars, but this isn’t a fair criticism considering the size of the book. By and large what it does, it does extremely well. There were no points where I yelled at the book for making a superficial error, as I have with some calendrical books I’ve read.

It’s a book which shows how brave the OUP is willing to be with the series. I can imagine a market for the VSI Classics, Shakespeare or Marx, but did the board of the OUP meet and tell each other that what they really needed was an accessible introduction to horology? It’s also well illustrated, which in my view is an excellent thing. It helps to be able to see what a diagonal calendar is, or what the Coligny calendar looks like.

If you’re looking for an affordable book to bring you over the ‘free delivery’ size for an order, then it’s well worth considering.