Dan Snow's History Hit - Frostquake

Episode Date: February 18, 2021

In the winter of 1962-63, the UK experienced a different kind of lockdown as freezing temperatures and ten weeks of snow kept people trapped at home in one of the coldest winters on record. Today, I'm joined by Juliet Nicolson who was eight years old at the time and has written a book all about that bitterly cold winter. She argues that the big freeze not only reflected the threat of the cold war but also beneath the frozen surface new ideas were beginning to stir which would lead to the massive cultural and societal shifts of the 1960s.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. You've heard Juliet Nicholson on the podcast before. She was recently on talking about the centenary of the laying to rest of the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey.

And she mentioned when she came on that podcast in November that she was just completing her book on a very cold winter, a very cold snap of weather in the UK that changed Britain forever and imposed upon everybody a kind of lockdown. Lots of important historical resonance there. She was eight years old in 1962. The snow started falling in December right across the UK and it didn't stop for 10 weeks. For 10 weeks, Britain was frozen solid. It was one of the coldest winters in Britain in recorded history. solid. It was one of the coldest winters in Britain in recorded history. But, as Juliet says, beneath the frozen surface, new life was green to stir. Listen to how she makes the link between that winter, the 60s, and big changes in our society. If you want to get listened to previous

episodes of this podcast without any ads on them, if you're sick of the ads, don't know why, but if you are, you can go to History Hit TV for a very small subscription. You subscribe to History Hit TV, which gets you hundreds of hours of history documentaries, hundreds of hours of wonderful history podcasts from me and other people. It's a sort of one-stop shop for everyone who loves history. So head over to historyhit.tv. But in the meantime, folks, enjoy Juliet Nicholson talking about Frostquake. Juliet, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. Such a pleasure to be asked again, Dan.

Now we are talking, this is almost like it was planned, we are talking in the cold winter of early 2021. We are locked down. Some of the coldest temperatures recorded in Britain. I don't know what the records are, but anyway, it's very cold and there's snow everywhere and everyone's complaining. But as you point out, go to historians because none of this is unprecedented. It's all very precedented. And you've got one particular winter that you think is worthy of writing about. It was so important. Yes, it is quite extraordinary. People said, really clever of you, Juliet, to plan one of the following 10 weeks, right up, in parts of the country, a lockdown because the infrastructure of the transport system was so affected that trains couldn't run. Gatwick had a foot of snow within a week of the snow beginning to fall. So planes weren't flying. And of course, the roads were impassable right up and down the country.

And it started in Scotland and sort of simultaneously right down in the south in Kent and Sussex. And then the snow began to spread throughout the country. huge winds which blew the snow into these vast drifts, which in some cases were incredibly beautiful. And people had to get out their pickaxes from the stone ages and hack their way through these vast drifts. So these beautiful tunnels of snow through which cars and animals and occasional human beings on skis slithered their way through. So it was dramatic, it was extensive, and if you were a child it was fantastic, just as it was this apparent snowfall immediately out for snowmen and snowballs. And I was a child and had a lovely time in the snow. a sort of interruption to one's daily life and a kind of, in effect, in some cases, a lockdown can bring hardship and in some cases, complete despair, as it did to Sylvia Plath,

who I write about in my book, finally ended it herself. But the impediment of snow meant that But the impediment of snow meant that shops had empty shelves in them. People couldn't get out to start to write a book about lockdown because of a horrendous virus when I started thinking about this book about three or so years ago. Let's start with some differences rather than similarities. I mean, was British society more or less geared up for cold weather?

Back in the day, were we less reliant on extended just-in-time supply chains or getting food up for cold weather? Back in the day, were we less reliant on extended just-in-time supply chains or getting food from around the world? Do you think we were more resilient or less resilient than we would be now to that kind of extreme weather? I think we were much more resilient. A large proportion of the population were those who had gone through not only one, but often two world wars, let alone a pandemic, as in the Spanish flu in 1918 to 20. So there were a hardy bunch. And freezing cold winters were not unusual. There'd been a really severe winter in 1947. So coming hard on the end of the Second World War. But it wasn't as cold as the one in 1962 to three.

It was the coldness that was really quite hard to bear coming over from Siberia with flesh falling to almost to freezing point. There were stories when I was looking into the research for this book of people would get out their skis from their attics of people would get out their skis from their attics, they would get out their wartime greatcoats, their hobnail boots. People in cities who didn't have sort of proper shovels and so on used their dustpans and knives and forks to kind of find their way through a path. I think there was a spirit of let's get on with it, put on another sweater. There was no central heating, pipes were bursting. But I personally don't remember the snow

and the coldness being a huge burden on our day-to-day life. And you ask about food, Dan, and people kept their potatoes and their apples and so on. If they were in the country, they kept them in their cellars all through winter. They could make meals out of smaller quantities. They were resourceful. They were an incredibly resourceful bunch. There was just the younger generation, maybe the teenagers who were perhaps not experienced of wartime life and who were keener to have their home comforts and somehow or other move on from this, oh, you know, we'll just grin and bear it. We're thinking so much about long-term consequences of these natural phenomena, whether it's half cold winters climate

crisis we're facing zoonotic diseases pandemics through all this research what are some of the conclusions you come to about what this cold winter meant for britain its legacy the context of the winter was serendipitously or ironically the fallout or the actual happening of the Cold War. This was a time in which the real threat of an atomic bomb falling on the world filled people's thoughts. We were just emerging from the Cuban Missile Crisis, which had taken place in October 1962. And the Russian aggression that had happened in Cuba was diffused by the diplomacy of the President of the United States, Jack Kennedy, and also our own Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. But the legacy of that fear was very, very real and very present. The winter only came a matter of weeks after that crisis. And Kennedy had been told that if a bomb were to fall, if a sort of Hiroshima writ large was to happen, a third of humanity would be wiped out, a third of humanity. And so this sense of the precariousness of life, an invisible threat like a virus in the form of spies, of rumour. very alive, that sense of fear and the imposition of a very cold, locked in, locked down, locked away winter, I think, encouraged resourcefulness, as I was saying, on a practical level, but also philosophically, a time to think.

Are we doing things the way we should be doing things? Is this world, this society in which we live, a tolerant one? Are we dealing with threat and fear and prejudice in the way that we perhaps should be. One of the most sort of significant things at the time of this winter was television. And there was a programme that had started up in December 62 called That Was The Week That Was, that was run by a bunch of satirists. It was on the BBC. It was every Saturday night. It was live in front of a television audience, a live audience of 12 million on average, tuned in on Saturday nights to listen to the satirists. And the satirists were young and angry and witty and clever and personified that sense of that young generation feeling we're not going to accept the way these old politicians continue to do things, this old boys network, this smug

way of going about things. Harold Macmillan was the head of a government that had been in power for 12 years, a conservative government. And where was the socialist? Where was the Labour Party? Did we still feel that a queen, a monarchy was what we should revere anymore? Were we accepting homosexuality in the way we should be? The pill had just been invented. It had been available on the National Health to married women only, mind you, for about a year before the snow began to fall. So this sense of sexual opportunity and liberation and choice and so on was very, very present. Racism, the whole Windrush thing of which now we are so acutely aware, was still relatively recent. Just a decade or so ago had the Windrush community arrived amongst us.

And so there was this programme that set out through wit and extraordinary outspoken daring innuendo but really very very close to the surface to demolish some of these prejudices and these ways of life that no longer for a post-war generation felt appropriate and if you can't go out in the snow to the pub or to your friends and you've got one of these fairly new named, a 23-year-old presenter who'd actually only ever done sort of cabaret. And then these Oxbridge characters, Willie Rushton, Peter Cook, and so on, who just were dismantling the old way of doing things. You're listening to Dan Snow's History, and've got juliet nicholson on talking about the cold winter of 1962 to three more after this land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories

that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies, teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. so julia are you saying to me that that cold weather that blanket of snow across the uk through those months that's the true birthplace of the 1960s and the revolution of the 60s

well i've been slightly taken to task for, that one winter can sort of change the world, change society, change our thinking. What I think it did was bring oxygen to all of those issues that were rumbling beneath the surface. It gave them air, gave them space. Of course, these things were not solved by the end of March 1963. But conversations had been had. in which the Minister for War, John Profumo, was rumoured to have had a fling with a 19-year-old model called Christine Keeler, who in turn was rumoured to have had a fling of her own with a Soviet spy in Britain. But this was a story that was, when I talked to people who'd lived through it, when I was researching the book, for example, a historian, Antonia Fraser,

whose husband was also in the government, she said to me, everyone knew. Everyone was the inner circle, the politicians, and a large swathe of the press. But it was not possible to publish these rumours or stories as one might do now. Obviously, there was no internet, no Twitter, a press that was much, much more deferential, and actually, quite frankly, terrified of being sued. So this rumour of a kind of closed-in entitlement of the way that politicians, particularly Tory politicians, were allowed to behave in conjunction with the fear that state secrets were being passed to the Russians at a time, as I was saying, of this extremely sensitive fear that the Russians were going to do something dreadful to the world, rumbled all the way through that winter and only came to its conclusion in March, Conclusion, in March, as the snow was beginning. And I spoke to somebody, David Dimbleby,

who happened to be in the public gallery on that day, and lied to the House of Commons that he had had this affair, at which the press decided enough was enough. And suddenly all hell began to break loose. And his final confession, Profumo's final confession, didn't actually come until the summer, until June of 63, at which time he resigned. And then beyond that, Macmillan himself resigned towards the end of the year. And then a year later, the new, very unusual for a leader of a British political party, Harold Wilson, who smoked a pipe and wore a mac and was in government, in power to try to lead his party through some of these reforms. reforms for things that had been aired during that winter to do with homosexuality, to do with abortion, to do with race, to do with all the things that were wrong with society. Bit of a gallop through history there, Dan, I'm sorry. Gosh, it just makes me think, I keep, of course, coming back to the present, makes me think what will be the great sweeping explosion of sentiment

that will come out of the next few months. It's going to be exciting times. You mentioned the snow melting there. So snow first started falling really in December, didn't it? Just how long were many parts of the country under a blanket of snow? Yes, well, you mentioned climate change. So at the beginning of December 62 was the final of these horrendous smogs that everyone had got used to, was the final of these horrendous smogs that everyone had got used to, mainly through the lack of regulation for burning coal fires in the cities. And so the sight of people in masks was not in the least bit unusual walking around the streets if they did venture out into the streets. And this smog, it's what Dickens wrote about.

This smog finally gave way on Boxing Day to the snow and the snow, as I said, fell for 10 solid weeks right up until the second week of March 63. And there's one other thing that is really important, I think, to mention at the time, because this is kind of the heavy duty political satirical focus in which I've written about. But also at the same time, an expression of tremendous joy and freedom was rippling through this younger generation who saw in America a younger president, saw Elvis Presley, saw blue jeans, saw big, shiny, amazing cars and wanted some of it for themselves. And so the second programme on television where everybody was locked in, unable to get out because of the snow, also on Saturday nights,

was Thank Your Lucky Stars, in which pop groups sang their latest hits. And it was a good programme because it invited unknown pop groups as well. And this band from Liverpool, who had been playing away together, four friends, in sort of sleazy underground cavern for a couple of years, the sort of sleazy underground cavern for a couple of years were invited to go on this program and they had a single called Please Please Me and everybody was listening to this absolutely irreverent joyful you know they chewed gum they talked to each other in and out of the songs they flirted with each other they They flirted with the audience. They were completely unlike anybody else who'd ever sung pop music. And by the time the winter finally left, please, please me, on that very day, I think on March the 7th, or could it be the 6th,

would it be the sixth? Went to number one. It was a complete perfect synchronicity of melting and wow, let's live a bit. I am looking forward to living a bit, Juliet. And I'm going to start because all good living involves reading. I'm going to read your book and then I'm going to gear up for the spring ahead of us. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast what's the book called the book is called frost quake and the subtitle of it is the frozen winter of 1962 and how britain emerged a different country thank you so much for coming back on the podcast oh lovely to talk to you dan as always. Pardon, just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys. In return, I've

got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast. We can do more and more ambitious things, and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the

ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.