Weatherland: Writers and Artists under English Skies

(Paperback)

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Description

The story of English culture over a thousand years can be told as the story of changing ideas about the weather. In a sweeping panorama, Weatherland allow us to witness cultural climates on the move, exploring how writers and artists, looking up at the same skies and walking in the same brisk air, have felt very different things. Alexandra Harris builds her remarkable account from small evocative details and catches the distinct voices of compelling individuals. 'Bloody cold', says Jonathan Swift in the 'slobbery' January of 1713. Percy Shelley wants to become a cloud, and John Ruskin wants to bottle one. Weatherland is a celebration of English air and a life-story of those who have lived in it. Chosen as Book of the Year by The Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Independent and Times Literary Supplement.

Reviews

'A fascinating portrait of that most British of preoccupations' - Independent
'A dazzling journey through the weather-worlds of English culture and history' - Robert Macfarlane
'A brilliant, beautiful and sensual book' - Sunday Times
'Gathers all the written English centuries and sets them dancing to the seasons on the head of its pin' - Ali Smith, Times Literary Supplement
'Splendid its glory is in the detail, in its recording of facts and lives, atmospheres and words, quirks of feeling and behaviour' - A. S. Byatt, Guardian
'years to come may be the last of English weather. If so, there is consolation in the thought that the damp glory of our island climate will live on in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Constable and Turner' - Daily Mail

Author Bio

Alexandra Harris studied at Oxford and at the Courtauld Institute in London, and worked at Christie's for a year before returning to Oxford to write a doctorate on art and literature in the 1930s. She is now a lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool, running courses on Modernism and American writing, and leading the MA in Contemporary Literature. Her first full-length book, Romantic Moderns, published by Thames & Hudson, was the winner of the 2010 Guardian First Book Award. Alexandra Harris was also a winner in the BBC's 'New Generation Thinkers' contest in 2011.