[The Guardian] The big picture: no such thing as bad weather

The big picture: no such thing as bad weather

This 1966 shot of a wintry London reveals how people are rarely dressed for an increasingly rare whiteout

As Billy Connolly observed, there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing. The office workers caught in a sudden blizzard on London’s High Holborn in 1966 illustrate Connolly’s point to varying degrees: the young woman on the left, in particular, seems to have dressed for winter sunshine, only to regret her choices more and more as the day has progressed. She now stands poised on the edge of a street of slush, in lacy tights and leaky shoes, preparing for the arctic expedition back to her desk wearing a beret of sleet. She may be some time.

A new book, London in the Snow, features several comparable wardrobe errors. Whiteouts are such infrequent events in the capital that they invariably catch a reasonable haul of high heels and shirt sleeves. The book takes in images of the black-and-white decades of the last century, from the years in which the Thames still froze over to the centrally heated 1970s, when the city centre rarely dropped below freezing (there were 116 snow days in London in the 1950s, compared with 36 in the last decade of the 20th century).

London in the Snow is published by Hoxton Mini Press (£16.95)

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