Frostquake: The frozen winter of 1962 and how Britain emerged a different country [9781784742959]

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Frostquake

Posted by michael Rauh on 15th Mar 2021

I remember the 1962/63 winter. I was 4, so it is an early memory but I remember the milk cart struggling to get through, drawn by the dairy horse, and I remember standing in the back garden dwarfed by the snow which was almost as high as I was tall at the time. For me it was just a blissfully happy childhood. We were used to the cold because we couldn't afford things like central heating, much too posh for us, and we had a Parkray solid fuel heater downstairs and that was the only source of heat apart from some portable fan heaters dotted around rooms upstairs.
I remember the frost on the inside of the window and when the bathroom was too cold to wash in we washed in the living room using a plastic (or it may have been an enamel) bowl.
The seriousness of the Cold War didn't really hit me until I was a little older. I grew up to the soundtrack of the Beatles and vaguely remember episodes examined in the book. like Harold Wilson becoming PM, but other things I am learning for the first time , which is a shame. Perhaps I should have known more about Sylvia Plath earlier. A fascinating read. very readable. A worthy testament to the socio-economic climate of the early 1960s.

5
Frostquake

Posted by michael Rauh on 15th Mar 2021

I remember the 1962/63 winter. I was 4, so it is an early memory but I remember the milk cart struggling to get through, drawn by the dairy horse, and I remember standing in the back garden dwarfed by the snow which was almost as high as I was tall at the time. For me it was just a blissfully happy childhood. We were used to the cold because we couldn't afford things like central heating, much too posh for us, and we had a Parkray solid fuel heater downstairs and that was the only source of heat apart from some portable fan heaters dotted around rooms upstairs.
I remember the frost on the inside of the window and when the bathroom was too cold to wash in we washed in the living room using a plastic (or it may have been an enamel) bowl.
The seriousness of the Cold War didn't really hit me until I was a little older. I grew up to the soundtrack of the Beatles and vaguely remember episodes examined in the book. like Harold Wilson becoming PM, but other things I am learning for the first time , which is a shame. Perhaps I should have known more about Sylvia Plath earlier. A fascinating read. very readable. A worthy testament to the socio-economic climate of the early 1960s.