For 17 years Thomas Manners, 52, helped to record the inexorable passage of time in London's sprawling la^ courts. As a clock mechanic in the Ministry of Works, it was his duty to wind, inspect and keep on time the 800 clocks scattered throughout the great building. One day last week. Manners climbed the stone stairs of the tall main tower to tend the intricate mechanism of gears, chains and weights in the great central clock that juts out from the law courts at Temple Bar, above London's busy Strand.
Manners' twice-weekly chore with...
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