winter – The British Newspaper Archive Blog

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A Look at the History of Britain’s Extreme Winter Weather

Nowadays, a single snowflake is enough to send the country into a panic, but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Britain faced freezing weather that brought with it extreme snowfall to all corners of the land. ‘A wintry scene in Kent’ | Illustrated London News | 8 February 1947 And so, using newspapers from our Archive, will we take a look at how such extreme snowfall impacted Britain, how it disrupted the nation’s communication system, from the early days of the mail

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Winter holiday fashion

Unsure of what to wear for rockin’ around the Christmas tree? Or worried about finding that perfect gift of stylish fashion for a loved one? Concerned about keeping warm while on the slopes or simply embarking on some Christmas shopping? Fret not! Our newspapers are overflowing with advice and ideas for all your fashion concerns this holiday season. Dressing for the occasion Everyone is busily engaged making preparations for Christmas, and albeit it is essentially the children’s season, there are

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Winter gardens and holiday flowers

Winter and your garden Winters can present challenges to those of us blessed with a green thumb. But, perhaps, the challenges have, at times, been over-exaggerated. The Illustrated London News commented on an illustration of ‘frozen-out gardeners’ chanting out a street melody of ‘we’ve got no work to do-oo-oo’: There are few but what have heard this miserable chorus, bawled out by half a dozen wretched-looking fellows, bearing bunches of frozen greens on the tops of long poles, as they

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The Freezing of the River Thames – January 1814

waterman on thames

Historical newspaper reports describing the big freeze in London in the winter of 1814 With the predicted snow and ice all set to turn much of the UK into a ‘retreat from Moscow’ landscape, we thought we’d post some old newspaper stories about the freezing of the River Thames, back in January 1814. There are certainly some striking and surreal images described in these stories – not least of which is the poor pig, stuck on an ice floe and

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