Laurie Penman has written an indispensable guide for both the absolute beginner and the experienced clock enthusiast. The Clock Repairer's Handbook provides information on how to repair and maintain a clock's delicate mechanics and teaches the basics of clock repairing through detailed, easy-to-follow instructions and more than three hundred instructive diagrams and illustrations. Advice and directions for cleaning clock movements, pivoting and mounting, fixing train faults and gears, the importance of lubrication and friction, and how to make sure the strike and chimes work on the...

The -common escapements- are those that are found in the domestic clocks that are most frequently found in a clock repairer's workshop. The average clock repairer is very rarely called upon to attend to a three legged gravity escapement or a -Graham grasshopper- (my earlier book -Practical clock escapements- deals with those). A book that deals with the design of the escapement only is very useful, but what a repairer really wants is a quiet word with the person who mauled the clock last and some useful information about what to do to repair or replace the sad result. This book describes what...

Britain in 60AD is divided into two major areas, the south east, which consisted of Roman Britain and the north which was now the nation of Camelod. This nation had grown rapidly from a small colony established by two Roman refugees, in 34AD. Over a quarter of a century Camelod has built a highly mobile army, and industries that make use of steam and water power. Although tiny by comparison with Rome, its' economy is strong. When Roman tax collectors took advantage of the death of the King of the Iceni (officially recognised as a 'Friend of Rome') to seize property, much of the wealth of the...

An army of Catuvellauni is gathering under the leadership of Caradoc with the intention of storming and plundering the fortress town of Windubro. A local tribe (the Coritani) are not active allies of Caradoc but they are numerous and his army would be vulnerable to sporadic attacks from their heavily forested domain. Seventy thousand warriors have gathered and more bands are arriving; one of them makes for a small town in the forest to replenish its rations only to find that the natives have nothing for them. In a fit of anger he has the daughter of the headman disgraced (the warriors are...

A little over a decade before the historical Roman invasion of Britain two Romans, refugees from the Emperor Tiberius fled to the island. They had wealth and planned to buy land for an estate and live in comfort on the edge of civilization, but out of the reach of Rome. Gregorius was the remaining son of a patrician family, who unusually had been educated in Alexandria by Heron the engineer, Lucius his adoptive brother was an officer in the Roman legion. Although their plans to buy land fail, a fortunate set of circumstances induces the elderly king of South eastern Britain to use the in...

This the first book of a series of Romano-British stories where history is bent just a little when two Roman refugees with a great deal of money flee Tiberius and build a town at the request of the King of the Cattuvelauni. The town prospers as a result of making use of new technology and military training.