Howard Bradley
Howard Bradley was a Cambridge academic until his retirement to France in 1996. As a young man he collected and restored scientific instruments but when the price of even beaten-up objects jumped far beyond
the capacity of his pocket, his fascination for mechanical things turned to clocks, mostly those examples too far gone to be considered reparable by the professionals. He developed a
major interest in electrical clocks, English and French, and another in the genius of the early industrialised French clockmakers.
On arrival in France, Howard and his wife devoted themselves to restoring their new home, creating a garden and integrating themselves into their new community, successfully enough for Howard to be one of the first
foreigners to be elected a municipal councillor in France. He restored several objects of historical interest in the commune including the church bells and a couple of clocks. To his surprise news spread quickly that there was a man
who repaired clocks for free and since then he has had a regular supply of clocks ‘to cast an eye over’, some of them so interesting he wrote about them in Clocks. He has written the illustrated catalogue of
the collection of comtoise clocks with automata in the Museu de la Tècnica de l’Empordà at Figueres in Spain and is currently creating an inventory of the turret clocks in the Department of Haute-Garonne for the departmental
archives. He also writes articles in French on gardens and plants for a botanical journal and others on local history.
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