The last time the Elizabeth Tower got one was seven years ago, when its clock faces exploded. Shards and flames everywhere, nothing like that adorns any watch, and especially not the most famous one in the world. Before that, the tower had, among other things, been struck by lightning, blown over a mummy, shot down by a UFO, washed under by a flood, swallowed by a storm, and riddled with holes by a meteor shower. Once the monster Gorgo simply knocked him over with his left hand. Finally, in 2016: “London Has Fallen”, literally shot on the clock. The American action film promotes the damaged landmark commonly known as Big Ben, even though Big Ben is actually the name of the heaviest of the tower’s five bells.
The destructiveness of the filmmakers that the 96 meter high clock tower of the Palace of Westminster provokes only speaks for its distinctiveness: if Big Ben falls, the audience knows that London is falling. The Tower has been blown up in the cinema at least seven times, according to the website of the British Parliament, which sits in the Palace of Westminster.
Big Ben has become more prominent in Great Britain than through screen appearances and departures through radio: his chimes, broadcast live to the United Kingdom at midnight on December 31st, traditionally ring in a new year, and have done so for a hundred years. The sounds were first heard in British living rooms on New Year’s Eve 1924, thanks to the BBC. Their employee AG Dryland climbed onto a roof opposite the tower with a microphone and recorded the sound: “bong” twelve times.
Big Ben weighs 13.5 tons, taken before the general renovation in August 2017.
(Photo: Victoria Jones/AFP)
Clock towers with chimes have existed at the location where Big Ben rings today since the mid-14th century. The current building, however, was only built after 1834, the year in which the Westminister Palace (really) burned down. Twenty years later, the clock on the new building was completed, and its bells rang for the first time on July 11, 1859. Since then, the largest strikes every hour on the hour. She rarely remained silent in the past, but she did do so from time to time. Stares on the hands, ice in the mechanics, defective gears, plus age – time doesn’t pass without a trace, especially on a watch. Most recently, the Elizabeth Tower underwent a general renovation and will not be able to be heard regularly again until 2022. But even during the five years that the tower was a construction site, the big bell was rung again in exceptional cases, such as at the Queen’s funeral and on New Year’s Day.
The kingdom has experienced seven monarchs, two world wars, various economic crises, an EU exit, a pandemic and a Boris Johnson since the first bell rang, and there is no end in sight. The tower, which doesn’t last 90 minutes in films, is in reality the epitome of durability, valued especially in times when there seems to be little to rely on, i.e. always. From Sunday to Monday, from 2023 to 2024, the “bongs” will be heard again in British living rooms, Gorgo wants.