We tend to see the ever-changing British weather through a binary lens. It is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Matt Gaw’s latest book, In All Weathers, wants to challenge that. He guides us on an immersive exploration of adverse weather: from rain to fog, wind, ice and snow.
I read this book as my body experiences its own climatic variations. Racked by fever, I swing from desert blaze to arctic chill in minutes. Yet I keep hungrily reading, covers on and covers off, as my weather changes.
That’s the thing with Gaw’s writing. It’s very, very good in such an understated, easy to devour way. The prose is warm and gentle, in turn humorous and serious. Each chapter, dedicated to rain, fog, wind, ice or snow, is rooted in Gaw’s charismatically told experiences. Woven through are rich layers of information about meteorology, climatology, geography, history and culture, all presented lightly, in an utterly unstuffy way. It answers many questions I’ve lazily pondered, like how rain sometimes falls out of a cloudless sky.
Gaw’s previous works, The Pull of the River and Under the Stars, are great reads, but this is his most accomplished yet. The puppyish enthusiasm remains but is held together now with an assured confidence and precision. The subject matter, too, has such universality. We all experience weather, whatever our circumstances, however limited our means, wherever we live, even if just through a window.
I analyse the lyricism to try and pinpoint the way it is so beautiful yet rarely at the cost of the pace and the bounce that keep the pages turning. It’s because each description is packed full of life and movement, making it so easy to visualise. Take this passage about the Cuillin mountain range: “It makes me think of barnacle crusts, or old whales that have been scarred white by deep-sea battles with squid or slashed by ship propellers. There is something of the heaved-from-the-sea about this part of Skye. As if it is only a temporary breaching and that one day it will wake and shake and sink again.”
Most of the weather described is close to home for Gaw in East Anglia. We discover the skaters on the frozen Fens, and the skin-drenching torrential rain of his hometown. This brings an intimacy and accessibility to the adventure.
Weather provides an alternative, ever shifting way to view the world – even the parts we know well are redrawn in extreme conditions. Gaw explains, “Once you get your eye in, hoar frost is a map. A chart of temperature and light.” It’s not just the picture before our eyes, but the global impacts too, as shown with wind, which is described as “the driving force behind weather”, that has “created trade routes and moulded landscapes”.
Moving beyond the physical and the geographical, there is something more fundamental. Weather has inspired countless poets and artists, and permeates our language, folklore and customs. Gaw writes: “Weather then, is not something that happens to the landscape or something that happens to us; it is a way of experiencing the world… We are weather.”
Of course, the climate is a highly politicised subject and one that is never far from the topic of weather. The climate crisis could have overshadowed this book, removing the joy and delight. Gaw treads that delicate balance of weaving in those messages without destroying what is ultimately a life-affirming celebration of time spent outdoors.
And so my fever breaks. After two days indoors, I can’t wait to get back outside, with a fresh appreciation for the invigorating, soul-soaring wildness of weather – the rain on my skin, the wind on my back, all of it.
In All Weathers: A Journey through Rain, Fog, Wind, Ice and Everything in Between by Matt Gaw. Elliott & Thompson, 2024. ISBN: 9781783967735