Just Finished Reading: Frostquake – How the Frozen Winter of 1962 Changed Britain Forever by Juliet Nicolson (FP: 2021) [319pp] 

England, 1962. It wasn’t quite a white Christmas but when it started snowing on December 26th at least the children were happy with the prospect of snowmen and sledging before they returned to school after the holidays. But as temperatures continued to drop and snow continued to fall everyone, including the children, just wanted the winter to finally end. They had a long wait ahead of them as the snow would fall for another 10 weeks. The winter of 1962/63 turned out to be one of the coldest and longest ever recorded. In some places the sea froze, in others diesel fuel in trucks and buses froze overnight, greatly restricted travel and deliveries of vital supplies. Army helicopters dropped hay to starving farm animals and across Britain hundreds of birds, apparently frozen in flight, fell dead onto ever deepening snow drifts. No one could remember anything quite like it. Yet the country failed to grind to a complete halt. Milkmen on skies (as on the front cover) delivered frozen milk to grateful housewives, bands like the up-and-coming Beatles kept on touring despite the weather and millions of television viewers stayed warm enjoying breakthrough satirical shows that poked fun at the Establishment in ways never seen before. Under the deepening blanket of snow things were changing, women like the designer Mary Quant and model Jean Shrimpton were making names for themselves and making money too, the old deference for authority was starting to crumble helped on by the political crisis brought on by the Profumo Affair and the people longed to break free of austerity Britain and start having fun. The ‘Swinging Sixties’ was just around the corner – once the ice melted. 

Although I was alive at the time – aged 2 ½ - I have no memory of this momentous winter. I can’t believe that living in a Victorian terraced house in Liverpool we were somehow immune to the cold, but I guess that I was simply too young or too unaware of events for it to have stuck with me. The author was 8 at the time and weaves her own and her family's story into the narrative which I thought was a good way to thread things together. I also liked the fact that, although she stayed in London and the Southeast for most of the events portrayed, the narrative covered the North as well as the South with interesting snippets of history around the early days of the ‘Mersey Beat’ and somewhat briefer mentions of the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Although I’d only recently read a whole book on the Profumo Affair, I was impressed that the author had managed to add a few more facts that I’d been unaware of. Overall, this was solid Social History and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I always find there’s something slightly odd about reading history books about a time that you lived through. There’s a kind of temporal ‘echo’ working faintly in the background. But as this was very early in my life the ‘echo’ was very faint indeed so didn’t distract from the narrative. Recommended for any fans of 60’s Britain. 

This is the last review of 2022. My 'Best of the Year' List will be coming on Saturday.