A winter’s tale
Frostquake: The Frozen Winter of 1962 and How Britain Emerged a Different Country by Juliet Nicolson Chatto & Windus, 368 pages, £18.99
There hasn’t been anything since to match the 10-week freeze that hit Britain in the winter of 1962–63. It was the coldest and bleakest of times. The Solent froze, icebergs in the Irish Sea posed a danger to shipping, and it seemed as though the country was in suspended animation, with transport grinding to a halt and unemployment soaring.
Water pipes froze, so people queued to use standpipes in the streets. To compound the misery, power workers took the
