The Wrong Kind of Snow

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  • Author: Antony Woodward
  • Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
  • Catalogue: 171321
  • Size: 18x14cm
“The Wrong Kind of Snow” is the complete daily companion to how the weather made Britain. It is a fact universally acknowledged that the British are obsessed with the weather. This is not surprising as no country in the world has such unpredictable weather, with such power to rule people's lives.

Rain gave us Inspector Morse and the sliding tackle. Fog gave us the Cat’s Eye, Impressionism and chains on front doors. Wind brought a Protestant monarchy. Hail gave us the Norwich Union insurance company. Storms gave us the pencil, the lifeboat, the Norfolk Broads and the first weather forecast. And cold, grey days? Penicillin. In Britain, what isn’t affected by the weather? Since the first chilly Roman sat on Hadrian’s Wall and pulled his socks on before his sandals (yes, they’re the culprits), British life and British weather have been inseparable.

31 January: The Big Freeze of 1963 brings the FA Cup competition to a halt: every football pitch in Britain is frozen: the third round takes 66 days to complete: the Pools Panel is formed as a result.

9 February: British Rail blames the 'Wrong Kind of Snow'. It was a journalist's phrase, but on this day in 1991 it stuck to the beleagured BR like flesh to ice.

15 July: The exceptionally hot and steamy summer of 1858 caused the Great Stink of London, resulting in the building of London's sewage system, still in use today. On the same day in 1930, rainfall in Yorkshire was so heavy that the Whitby lifeboat makes a rescue two miles inland.

10 September: A violent storm rather than British sea power defeats the Spanish Armada in 1588. Had the weather held and the fleet reached home, it would have been hailed as a Spanish triumph. Four centuries later, bad light and rain stop play at the Oval.

This is the story of a people forever caught out in the rain (or by the wrong kind of snow). But it’s also the story of a country that knows how to appreciate a fine day. It’s about an obsession with fresh air - and the thousands of ways we’ve devised to make the most of it. Because, beneath our restless skies, there’s something only we know: in Britain there’s no such thing as a dull day.An incredibly addicted book, you’ll find yourself coming back to it time and time again.