Speakers: Rachael Lichtenstein, Alexandra Harris

In Weatherland, Alexandra Harris’s subject is not the weather itself but the weather as it is daily recreated in the human imagination. She builds her remarkable story from small evocative details and catches the distinct voices of compelling individuals: Percy Shelley wants to become a cloud and John Ruskin wants to bottle one. In this richly illustrated panorama of cultural climates on the move, Harris cleverly reveals that weather is at the very heart of English life and culture. The Thames estuary is one of the world’s great deltas, providing passage in and out of London for millennia. Rachel Lichtenstein has travelled its length and breadth and in Estuary: Out from London to the Sea she presents many voices, offering a thoughtful and intimate portrait of the estuary’s community and environment, how each has shaped and continues to shape the other.