In All Weathers

Matt Gaw (Elliott & Thompson, £16.99)

THE author is someone who has decided that weather, in all its dramatic inclemency, is there to be leaned into, embraced and thoroughly enjoyed. Matt Gaw’s descriptions of walking through rain, fog, ice and snow and wind (there are no sluggish heatwaves) are occasionally selfindulgent, but buffet the reader along in exhilaration. Rain, he says, ‘nourishes the soul’, although, admittedly, this was written before the relentless downpours of the past six months. Getting lost in the fog in a ‘bubble of reduced visibility in a landscape transformed’ excites him and there’s an atmospheric description of racehorses looming eerily out of the mist on Warren Hill in Newmarket. He revisits the 19thcentury tradition of fen skating on the frozen flood waters of the Wash; in December 2022, when the ice is 3in thick (4in is the ideal), he meets a graceful 78 year old, hands behind his back, chest out, in the manner of Raeburn’s Skating Minister.

A study of hailstorms reveals that the most extreme was in 1697 and killed a shepherd, with stones of up to 17in wide in Hertfordshire. The biggest hailstone was recorded in 1958— it weighed more than 6oz and fell on Horsham, West Sussex—and in 2021, chunks of flying ice broke car windows in Leicestershire. In 1952, a blanket of warm, moist air became trapped over London, creating a fog—or smog —nearly 220 yards deep; it even permeated indoors, halting a performance at Sadler’s Wells. Wind is the least tangible of weathers, Mr Gaw writes, but has the most impact, influencing trade routes of the past and bringing rain and snow. It can also create a febrile atmosphere: an American study reveals that school playground fights double when it’s blowy and Swedish research shows that heart attacks increase on windy days, rare downbeat messages in a more than usually cheerful book about weather.