Keeping time, marking time, making time, wasting time, bending time: language gives us the illusion of control, of authority over time in its many forms. We know this is false: that time, with or without our efforts, ticks on forward, predictably and inexorably. Don’t we?

Ever since human beings first painted images on the walls of caves in an attempt to preserve things absent, we have grappled with this most elusive of relationships, trying to wrestle back control over time – whether through science, history, philosophy or art.