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Tom Fort whose writing has been variously described as ’jocund’ ’slightly loopy’ ’ unbelievably poignant’ and ’deeply peculiar’ travels around Britain experiencing some of its extremer climates and some of its more typical with a view to explaining what we make and have made of the British weather and what it has made of us.There are two interlocking strands: the story of those who - moved to an exceptional sometimes obsessive degree by the fascination felt by so many of us - sought to know and understand our weather; and the story of its impact on us - our history our culture the way we think and behave.He focuses on the people - the clergymen the gentlemen of leisure the crackpots visionaries charlatans and shysters all now largely or utterly forgotten - who volunteered and toiled for the cause telling their stories by tracking them down to the places - usually their own gardens - where they indulged their quite passion for measuring rainfall scrutinising dewdrops tapping their barometers and peering at their thermometers.Once their age - of the amateur scientist - was over and the business of weather forecasting was annexed by professionals with state backing it became a less colourful affair.The historical strand is in part a straightforward chronology; an account of the part played by climate in our history; how when the sun shone and rain fell in gentle abundance we prospered and multiplied; how when the climate cooled bringing wet summers and savage winters we perished by plague and famine and retreated from places made unbelievable; how in time as we matured from a rural peasant society our weather became less a matter of life and death (though always on absorbing interest).But beyond that there is another dimension to its influence on us - the moral and spiritual one.This is contentious but intriguing: the extent to which we share as view of ’our weather’ and the extent to which it may have shaped us into the people we are.
