Ontelly

Bong! The Condensed History of Big Ben

Logo for Bong! The Condensed History of Big Ben

The Great Clock of the Palace of Westminster is celebrating 150 years of almost continuous time telling. To mark the occasion Adam Long, co-founder of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and his two friends Simon Jermond and Giles Terera, take a whirlwind musical tour of all things Ben. It is a story of arduous neo-Gothic design, bells that kept cracking and the invention of something called a double three-legged gravity escapement mechanism.