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Average Customer Rating:

fascinating stuff	Customer Rating:
I found this book fascinating. I really enjoyed reading about the records concerning British weather, such as The Weirdest Showers or The 1987 Storm. It is interesting to see how the British climate has changed so much over the 1000 years the book covers and the freakish goings on of our weather!

Snowballing bandwagons

Customer Rating:

No one would accuse Simons of being a stylist. Observe the steady drizzle of cliche ('The disaster sent shock waves through the public. The Bridge had been opened only for 18 months, and was seen as a triumph of Victorian engineering'). Marvel as he mixes his metaphors ('But the white Christmas bandwagon snowballed and the icy charms of A Christmas Carol struck a chord with the Victorians, nostalgic for the past...'). Shiver at the redundancies ('By 1779 Britain was almost on the verge of bankruptcy...'). He can keep this up for pages, the prose equivalent of a wet November. But the style is not the only annoying feature of the book. Although marketed as 'a complete guide to record-breaking weather in the British Isles', there is no index or indeed any other reliable way of locating information about the wettest day or the biggest hail-stones. Nor does Simons acknowledge any of his sources, so there is no way of checking up on the information, or reading further into the subject. Numerous typos and missing words also betray the speed and lack of care with which the book has been assembled. The subject matter is, of course, fascinating. But it could all have been done so much better.