The clocks get put one hour forward on 27th March 2011 and one hour back on 30th October 2011.
This change happens twice a year: the last Sunday in March, we add an hour and change to British Summer Time and the last Sunday in October, we put our clocks back one hour and follow Greenwich Mean Time.
Benjamin Franklin, an American politician and inventor, was the first to mention the idea of clock changes in 1784.
In the UK, we have been changing our clocks since 1916, following an idea proposed by William Willett, a London builder. He had noticed that in the summer months people were losing a lot of daylight time in the morning, sleeping. He therefore, proposed to put the clocks forward to allow people to enjoy more daylight in the afternoon instead of in the morning. The British government finally adopted this system after William’s death.
The following website contains real-time information about different time zones:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
You can also read many interesting articles in TIME magazine:
