Emily Rhodes

Rainy day reading

I am beginning to lose my patience with the weather. I suspect I am not alone in feeling utterly dispirited by this endless onslaught of rain. We have just come out of the wettest April on record, and still the rain falls … It’s too terrible for words.

Except that nothing is too terrible for words. Words do rather a good job of getting things right. So I have turned to words – to written words – to seek advice and find inspiration in the dreadful wet weather.

The weather is so deeply ingrained into the English psyche that it is no real surprise to find its presence equally pronounced in English literature. From an admittedly biased and cursory survey of some of my favourite books, when rain appears it seems to be urging one of two things.

Firstly, creativity.

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