SPRING forward, fall back…

Yes, it’s that time again. If you’re a fan of summer, rejoice, if not, then look away now.

At 1am on Sunday, March 31, the clocks are going forward, making evenings brighter, but costing us all an hour in bed.

It marks the start of British Summer Time – but why do we do this?

Well, it all dates back to the start of the 20th century, when a campaign was launched to change the clocks and help people in the northern hemisphere make more use of the earlier daylight hours.

William Willett – an early promoter of British Summer Time (and great-great-grandfather of Coldplay singer Chris Martin) – published a pamphlet in 1907 titled ‘The Waste of Daylight’, which suggested changing the clocks in the spring and putting them back in the autumn.

However, Willett’s proposal was complicated, involving advancing the clocks by 80 minutes in four separate moves of 20 minutes each.

Willett died in 1915. A year later Parliament passed the Summer Time Act, which established the practice of putting the clocks an hour forward during the summer.